State Fair Goat Show & Such...

2012's show season is a wrap. I had considered going to the buck show in Mo. in Oct. but if you've seen - or better yet, SMELLED - my bucks here recently, I seriously doubt you'd blame me for not taking them.

Rachel talking to the judge. She answered all her anatomy questions correctly with special mention from the judge on how good of a job she did. Blue ribbon for participation! Yippee!

We brought home lots of ribbons from state fair, no blues. The main theme was that I have slow maturers. That may sound like a bad thing, it's not. It's what I am aiming for. The comments from the judge were all good. Validating, in fact! Slow maturers last longer. I just need to set them on a shelf, feed them well and wait...I can be patient...I see their potential. Aside from that, they are still productive now and will be productive for a long time to come. That's exactly what we want!

We've cut down the herd drastically. Rachel said goodbye to one of her bottle raised dry yearlings. I  didn't think that would be an easy thing and it didn't start out as one but let me tell you, this girl has matured so much in the past 6 months in regard to "farm life". We didn't hear a single thing about eating a rooster she named "Pigeon" other than to say he tasted good, and he did! And what made him taste better was the fact her was a jerk! The pigs, well, they are just something else to put on the plate too and the goats are producers, in some way shape or form and it doesn't seem to bother her one bit any more.

The amount of help I got from her at the show was tremendous! She was asking me all the time if there was something she could do, which is a far cry from other shows where I had to hunt her down to let her know her next class was coming up. She helped other people load and unload and clip and clean and primp. She filled buckets and feeders and exercised goats and more importantly she invested a lot of time before hand leash training the babies so on the big day they were all walking well...except for little miss Sugar. She decided she wanted to be a ballerina that day and walked on 2 feet instead of 4 almost the entire class she was in! In her defense though, she is just 3.5 months old!

I can't recall if I mentioned or not but my egg bread was 2nd place and Drew's cookie were 2nd place.

Every year I plan to have things made out ahead of time, part of the reason I did not have any sewing entries, I always plan to have things done well in advance if they can be, every year I kinda fail. Oh well =).

There's always next year =)...