Proud Members

At Capricious Ventures Boers, we raise fullblood, purebred, and percentage Boer goats.  After raising traditional Boers for a couple of years, we have started raising colored and spotted/dappled Boers with the same sweet personalities we expect from all our goats.  We run a CL- and CAE-free herd and are careful to make sure it stays that way!  We pride ourselves on selling healthy animals that we would want to own ourselves, which means we look for sweet dispositions, ease-of-handling, strong conformation, and great color.

You can reach Rebecca, our herd manager extraordinaire, at (720) 231-6311 or by email, at rabattuee@gmail.com 

Prospective January 2012 Breedings

I am back in Colorado for 10 days and that makes me think less about mergers and acquisitions… and so much more about goats!  Cannot wait to see all the girls and how all the 2011 kids have matured.   Of course, this time of year we all start thinking about breeding season and matching up pairs.  We’re very excited to see what might come from matching Red and Collage with Orion.  We are planning to breed later this year (around January) in hopes of an easier kidding season but the bucks are certainly ready to go!

Everything we have for sale is listed on Lacy’s site: http://www.luckycloverboers.com/

We got Rosie through her pregnancy trials, although we ended up having to induce her into labor to save her.  Needless to say, we lost the kids–they were just too far from term to make it, which was very sad.  We found their little bodies outside when we went to check on Rosie that Tuesday morning–Rosie would have had a beautiful pair of twins, one buckling and one doeling, if they had lived.

Rosie’s pregnancy toxemia is probably the worst illness we have had in our time raising goats–we’ve been lucky to live in a place where the weather doesn’t normally fluctuate to such extremes, which can put stress on pregnant does and induce pregnancy toxemia.  This winter was a bad one, though, with temperatures changing from mid-60s to below freezing, sometimes overnight.  It was just too much for Rosie to handle, even with a warm barn and plenty of good fodder.  We’re sad we lost the babies but happy our Rosie made it through ok.

After a pretty dismal start to kidding season, everything else was remarkably easy.  There’s always some anxiety around the waiting portion of kidding season, but our three other does–Penny, Wanda, and Moon–all kidded without a hitch and we now have five beautiful kids running amok in the April sunshine.  Three of our kids (the bucklings) are on our for sale page, in case anyone needs a beautiful, sweet boy to improve their breeding program.  All of our kids are good examples of our breeding goals: color and personality!
This past couple of months also saw some pretty serious discussions about the future of our breeding program.  Since Sara, CV’s driving force and unofficial (at least among the caprines) Goat Queen, is in New York for the foreseeable future wheeling and dealing as an investment banker, and I am in the process of figuring out the next step in my legal career after clerking, we will be looking carefully at CV’s realistic carrying capacity.  While we are committed to breeding, raising, and selling quality animals, we also want to be realistic about our time commitments.  What that means, going forwards, is anyone’s guess, but we are confident that goats and CV will continue to be part of our lives in the future!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the babies!

Moon Shadows baby, Orions Shadow

Wanda and her flashy spotted babies, Clover (left) and Knight (right)

So much flash!

The bucks look on in interest.

Kodie (our biggest baby)

More pictures and news to follow!

And a couple of days later… Wanda x Clover’s Orion kids!

Pregnancy toxemia (which is sometimes used interchangeably with ketosis) is essentially caused by the high energy demands on a doe in late pregnancy.  The doe cannot take in enough calories and calcium to sustain her body and the growing kids.  Theoretically, kidding relieves that pressure somewhat, although the demands of producing milk after kidding can push does into milk ketosis.

Anyway, it just took a quick shot to induce labor.  Then the waiting began.  Dr. Flinchum said that we could expect her to kid out within 24 to 48 hours of administering the injections, unless she was already close to kidding.  I checked on her several times on Saturday evening before falling asleep exhausted.

She is being a pretty good sport, all things considered.  Since Friday, we have injected her with calcium, penicillin, antibiotics, and vitamin B-complex several times a day (including once above her ear for the antibiotics, which slowly disseminate through her body over about five days), drenched her with a calf drencher (which involves sticking a steel tube down her esophagus past her gag reflex point and pouring a mixture of calcium, water, and yogurt down her throat), fed her more yogurt and propylene glycol by mouth, and generally made nuisances of ourselves checking on her and trying to get her to eat.

I haven’t left the house since Friday night (even after running out of Chinese food, which was a dark moment indeed).  Luckily, things start to be slightly improved: Rosie has eaten a little alfalfa and is a little more lively.  We’re now watching for signs of kidding and hoping the kids survive.

The really big news is that it’s getting closer and closer to kidding season—we’re officially due to kick things off the middle of next week—and Penny and Rosie, our older two does, are enormous.  They waddle around their pen like overloaded barges.

We’ve been very lucky with our kidding seasons thus far.  This will be our third breeding season.  In that time, we’ve only lost one kid (which may have been stillborn) and have had no really complicated births.  We have a small herd of well-socialized does who are good mothers, which helps.  Of course, kidding season is enough to make anyone nervous, especially my mother, who is a doctor and therefore can imagine a universe of disasters foreign to the rest of us.

And then there are the things anyone who works with animals would notice.

Yesterday morning, my mother noticed that Rosie, who is one of our original breeding does, was not interested in the usually irresistible sweet mix we feed when we get closer to kidding.  We call this being off her feed, and it’s bad.  It was especially bad because Rosie is an Eater-with-a-capital-E.  We have a picture of her when she was very young standing in a feed tub and searching desperately for the last particle of grain, just to give you an idea.

A goat who goes off feed is never good news, but a goat in late-term pregnancy who goes off feed raises serious red flags.  The two conditions that we worry about are called ketosis and pregnancy toxemia.  (Incidentally, we keep a stack of great goat books to help us care for our herd.  Today I consulted The New Goat Handbook (the “NGH”) and Keeping Livestock Healthy (“KLH”), which have proved invaluable.)  Ketosis and pregnancy toxemia are similar conditions and both occur as a result of a doe being unable to consume enough energy during the late stages of pregnancy or during milk production for new kids to support her body’s needs.  KLH notes that, “in fat ewes [or does] . . . withholding feed 24 to 48 hours, abrupt change in diet, or the stress of inclement weather” can all trigger these conditions.  (KLH, 4th ed. at 286.)  Goats suffering from ketosis or pregnancy toxemia “will stand aloof from the flock, blunder into objects if they move, and sometimes stand with their heads pressing against a wall or fence for hours on end.”  (Id.)  And the worst news of all has to do with outcomes: both conditions, if not properly treated, can be fatal, and even with treatment, the mortality rates are high.  (Id.)

Luckily, at least when treatment can help, we have a phenomenal goat vet: Dr. John Flinchum.  After my mother and I both observed Rosie’s listlessness and general apathy during morning and evening feeding, we decided it was time to call in the pro.  (Naturally, all of this was made more complicated by the fact that we were due to spend the weekend at the Broadmore, a ritzy hotel in Colorado Springs.  My mother headed up on Thursday and my father, brother, and I were planning to drive down Friday after work, leaving the goat herd in the capable hands of Corey, our goat girl.  The best laid plans of mice and men…)

I was due at work, so my brother Andy agreed to meet Dr. Flinchum Friday afternoon.  When Dr. Flinchum arrived, he attempted to get a urine sample from Rosie but she wasn’t interested in peeing on a test paper.  Like with diabetics, the urine of goats with ketosis smells somewhat sweet or like acetone because of the buildup of ketone bodies.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you feel about these types of things), one some people have the version of the gene that lets them smell the ketone bodies.  Dr. Flinchum isn’t one of those lucky folks, so he’s bereft of a handy diagnostic tool.

After consulting me at work, Dr. Flinchum recommended treating Rosie as though she had ketosis.  He gave her 60 cc’s of propylene glycol orally, as well as 5 cc’s of B-complex vitamins as a subcutaneous injection.  My instructions for the evening were to watch Rosie for changes in her listlessness, appetite, and general presentation, and to try and get her to eat 60 cc’s of live culture yogurt using an oral syringe.

I hurried home from work, stopping in the house only to change from Lawyer Me to Farm Girl Me (more blue jeans, fewer Latin phrases) before heading out to the goat barns.  Kodie, our livestock guardian dog, was there to greet me, oblivious to my anxiety.  I checked on the girls, noticing no change in Rosie from when I’d last seen her.  Then I headed back out for yogurt and Chinese takeout, my consolation prize for missing the weekend with my family at the Broadmore.

Back at the house again, with a tub of the best organic  yogurt ever purchased to feed to a goat (and most importantly, brimming with live cultures to jumpstart Rosie’s rumen into action), I filled the oral syringe.  Goat-wrangling, even with our sweet girls, is really a two- or three-person job, especially when we have to do something they are not going to like.  But I was on my own, so I trudged through the back pasture with my yogurt-filled syringe in my hand, my knee-length, down-filled coat protecting me from the night’s chill.

When I got to the big girls’ pen, the goat-wrangling began in earnest.  Rosie probably weighs 150 pounds when she is not pregnant, and as I mentioned earlier, she is now the size of a Shetland pony.  Of course, she’s ungainly, but she’s also fragile and clearly about to burst with kids.  I grabbed a horn in one hand and backed her rump into a corner.  Then I tried to insert the syringe into her mouth, which caused Rosie to remember that she was actually a Goat of Considerable Strength.  I nearly fell over when she executed a particularly inspired twist-and-duck move.  Finally, after arguing about whether or not she was going to eat her yogurt or just get it all over both of us, I managed to find a position where I could stand and, horn in one hand, syringe in the other, fold myself around Rosie’s head to limit her movement enough to get the yogurt into her mouth squirt by incremental squirt.

Even with a good hold on her though, long story short?  Yogurt everywhere.  There was yogurt on Rosie’s cheek, some on my cheek, yogurt in her hair, yogurt in my hair.  By the time I was done getting most of the yogurt into her mouth (at which point she seemed to like it, so I really don’t know what all the fuss was about), we were both blotchy with exertion and yogurt.  Looking down as I write this post, I actually see yogurt stains on my sweater, which was covered by my coat during the entire yogurt incident.

I don’t know if it was the wrestling or the yogurt, but Rosie looks a little more lively after we were done.

Later, when I was finished with my lukewarm Chinese takeout, I cracked open my fortune cookie.  The fortune read: “If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.”  Managing the goat herd is sometimes nerve-wracking, but like anything worth doing, it’s rewarding, too.  (Of course, the second fortune cookie’s fortune read: “A new friend helps you break out of an old routine,” so maybe it’s a good idea not to put too much credence in little slips of paper inserted into our food.)

Off to bundle up and check on my girls again.

Buddy the Hound - Nooks (well mostly me) - Hanging by the Fire – Decorating Cookies!

I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to escape work and the city for a holiday trip home to Colorado.  My visit was even extended (was it so obvious I wasn’t ready to leave?) by a fortuitous snowstorm in NYC that delayed flights for a good three days.  I tried to spend every moment doing my favorite Colorado things and seeing my favorite Colorado people: riding my beautiful boy Chinook, hiking with Buddy the coonhound, taking pictures, hanging with the family and the amazing farm gals, getting out to the range for a little practice,  and of course getting some much-needed quality herd time!   Tried to take pictures of everything we did in the absolutely gorgeous 50-60 degree weather that lasted just long enough until it was time for me to return to snowy Wall Street.

Red always wants people to come out into the pasture to say hello

BK playing with Goats!

Yes, the first thing I wanted to do upon arriving home was be surrounded by The Girls!

Playing with my favorite polar bear … Kodie made me feel like she missed me, which was very nice of her (although we all know she is much too busy guarding the herd to be too bothered)

Jade being her usual mischievous self!

And yes, on one of our adventures Buddy brought us to a dead cow!

Orion, although he looks quite grown up, is still my little sweetheart.

It finally starting snowing as I was leaving from DIA.

and back to reality…

The Girls (Wanda, Jade, Rita and Kimber)

As many of my goat friends already know, I left Boulder and the daily care of my beloved goat herd back in July to move to Manhattan for a job in finance.  Life in the city has been an adjustment but while I’m here I’m trying to embrace “city life”.  Of course, I can’t seem to resist butting into the goat raising business completely (big surprise) so I claim that I’m still a goat rancher even surrounded by the skyscrapers and concrete jungle of New York City (below a view from my office!).

We (yes we!) are excitedly planning our kidding season and matching does up for 2011.  Moon, our black and cream dapple has been bred to Orion, our spotted buck along with one of our red fullblood Wanda.  Rosie, one of our original big traditional does who throws color every year, is also bred to Orion.  Can’t wait to see what we get and fingers crossed for some nice little doelings we can retain to grow our herd.  I’m already planning on an east coast “strategic acquistion” to bring an Imax 3D or Dappled $ buckling to the ranch for next season to continue to improve our spotted breeding program.  Very exciting as many of our fullblood doelings will finally be ready to be bred at that point.  Penny is bred to Maverick, our big stocky traditional and hoping the match will add a little bulk to our long tall gals. 

Sometimes, when I’m very lucky, people send me pictures of my girls (Red and Dapple pictured below)!

Update:

We had a pretty exciting but uneventful trip to visit Elise and Zoe in WA, well if you consider hauling four goats in the back of a rented SUV for 20 hours straight to be uneventful.  We spent a beautiful afternoon at White House playing with barn cats and preparing for the trip home.  Just happy we made it back safe and sound and everyone is happy and healthy!

We are so pleased with the does we brought home and happy we could help Karen of Little Creek Boers receive her new additions!

Its official, I’m planning my goat transport trip to White House Goats to pick up 3 doelings and a buck from Elise.  The trip started out as just picking up one doeling – Perfect Collage who is on our colored doe page- and a gorgeous buck, Rhino for Lacy at Lucky Clover Boers.  Elise’s goats are so popular in Colorado that I’ll be moving goats for two different farms in addition to my own- Karen of Little Creek Farm will be getting two little doelings.  We’ll be doing the 40 hour round trip drive in my CRV.  The trip promises to be a crazy one.  Will be sure to take pictures along the way to document the insanity of 4 kids in the back of a CRV for 20 hours.