Our Gateway to Color

Back in 1998 when we started raising goats, we only had pygmies. Throughout the years, we have slowly added Nigerian dwarfs to our herd (which is now about half and half of each breed). When breeding, we only kept the best, improving our lines. Ever since we started raising them, we have always done well with them. The judges liked them and we were often complemented on comformation but we never had flashy colors. They were also mostly solid colors like our pygmies.

While solid colors are perfectly acceptable when it comes to judging, flashy goats are cooler to look at. The Nigerian dwarf goat breed standard allows the flashy colors that are not acceptable for pygmies. Here some examples of such colors from other herds:

Soon, we were not only looking for conformation, but we hoped to find some flashy color too. We added our first colorful does (Promise and Payton) in February, 2010.

I know it's kind of hard to see their color because they are in show clips, but they are both beautiful buckskin colored does. Then, kidding season came around and we learned that our buck, Frankie, had some color in his background.

Although he doesn't look very colorful himself, he gave us two beautiful buckskin bucklings.

Then, one day late October 2010, we looked out into the barn yard and noticed that Promise and Payton were growing udders; the bucks had escaped the buck pen! Promise had a doe and a buck; we kept the doe. Her dad was Pistachio, a pretty black and white buck. We named her Pistachio Dream. Here she is:

Two weeks later, Payton kidded a doe and buck also. We kept the doe. Her dad turned out to be Frankie. Here is Paisley:

So, while over-all correctness is our main goal here, why try to also add some eye-candy to the herd and I believe we are off to a good start!