to go!!!
Kelly grew up on a ranch in New Mexico, so has raising cattle in his genes. I grew up owning horses and around a small dry land farm. I was never really exposed to more than 5-10 cows at a time, but knew I loved animals. We now have a small 80 acre farm in Colorado. We also run 100+ Simmental Cows and 70+ Fullblood and Boer Cross Breeding Does.
We started the cattle operation in 1993 with 14 heifers and one bull. Through hard work, determination, and careful culling we have built up to 109 mama cows over the last 14 years, We've managed to only buy 26 cows during that time, the rest have all been "home raised." We try to carefully select the replacement heifers that we keep and run strictly full simmental bulls. Over the last few years we have also built up a customer base for which we sell processed beef.
The goats came along many years later. Our boys started participating in the local Saddle Club events and I felt they needed "a goat to practice" tying. About the same time I had heard that Boer goats were in rather high demand for their meat content. Knowing having a goat around our place would go over like a lead balloon, I bought four doelings for the kids to practice on. That fall, I purchased a full blooded billy and 10 more does---much to hubbie's disapproval! In the last 4 years I have grown my goat herd to 90+ does and have finally reached a point at which I often have nice doelings to sell. I also sell quite a few wethers to the local 4-H kids and periodically have people who want wethers to butcher. I need to reduce the number of does I have on hand, as we are going to have less summer pasture this year than in the past. You will eventually see quite a few does for sale, I will also have a FB billy for sale and will be happy to put together a package deal if interested.
Our part time jobs are now a second full time job for each of us, luckily our kids are old enough to be extremelly good help. Irregardless of the "negatives," there's nothing more satisfying than raising animals!
During the winter cattle are turned out to field pasture where they eat alfalfa, corn stalks, pinto bean vines/hulls, and in some instances watermelon vines. Weined calves are fed a ground alfalfa/hay grazer/corn ration. Summer months for the cattle are spent on a 10,000 ranch in the mountains where the grass is green and the days are cool.
The goats spend their summer roaming from pasture to pasture eating various grasses, weeds, and sometimes mowing neusance trees for someone. When penned up, they are fed the same feed as the calves. ALL goats are vaccinated with Covexin 8 and are on a worming program. Breeding does are also given a vaccine for Chlamydia, Campylobacter, and Case Bac for CL--as per our vet.