Sunday, May 8, 2011

Storm's Daughter's - Part 2

This could be titled - "The UDDER view" haha! Anyway. In dairy goats, it kind of becomes all about the udder at a certain point....with a buck - seems to be one thing we goat folks look at. What does the buck's dam and sister's udders look like? What about his daughters. And while this is only 3 daughter's of Storm, I can honestly say - what it looks like only tells half the story - you need to have more of a hands on approach!
NONE of Storm's daughters have the same udder (at least not the way it looks. None of them even have very big udders. But I can see that they could easily have them with subsequent freshenings. One thing I can say about their udders is that each one is an improvement somewhere from their dams udders. This and the top picture are CBF CS SG Ammi. Her udder is softer than her Granddam - Willow. She has the same small teats but as far as milking her goes she is waaaay easy. Her udder is so soft. I milked her dam for a very short time - Dixie and from what I recall - it is easier than hers as well. She has good MSL and Lateral attachments - I'd love to see bigger teats and better foreudder extension.

Hope is one of my favorites. She has the good Foreudder attachement, is snuggly attached and fills out that escutcheon very well. She also has a very soft udder and wonderfully plumb teats. But they stick out to the side some. I kind of hope that when that udder fills out next year that it will push the teats down a bit.
Stars. This udder doesn't look big and for her size - it really isn't but I can tell that there is a lot of capacity there - if she had triplets or more - watch out world. There is plenty of room for expansion - her teats are nearly ideal in placement, has good foreudder extension but could use some lateral. Her escutcheon is a bit on the narrow side but most certainly she is an improvement on her dam and granddam!Like all of Storm's kids so far that I've milked it is butter soft and milk just flows out of her.
I am so excited to see what next years' kiddings with these girls are like. I think it will be even more exciting than this years for me. Not to mention I will get to see an Intrigue daughter freshen as well. It is so much fun to see what your breeding program is doing.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Storm's Daughters

For two years I have been waiting for this year - I have 3 of Piddlin Acres H Calm the Storm's daughters in Milk here at CBF Nigerians. I really was hoping to have this last year but it just didn't happen! I freshened Stars (out of CFB Ent's Twinkle Lil' Star 2*D)
and Hope (out of Nizhoni's DW Tirzah) and just was blessed to get CBF CS SG Ammi (Out of CBF Ent's Whistlin' Dixie) back from the Ruiz's.
Ammi is the only 2nd FReshener but one thing I am really noticing about Storm's girls is that they are consistant. They aren't huge milkers (though I don't usually expect First Fresheners to be huge milkers) but they are very level so far and have very little fluctuation in their milk amounts from day to day.
and I really like what Storm as done in other areas as well. His daughters are typically long, have level toplines,have good strong legs and feet - very straight.They are also very dairy - having good bone structure and ribbing. I am excited to see how the girls do with another freshening and some maturity but so far - I'm not at all unhappy by what I'm seeing. Even though Storm has moved on to work in someone else's herd (Nizhoni's) I am sure glad he was here for two years and that his wonderful genetics have worked so well for my herd!