Springwater Dairy Goat History
I thought it might be fun to write about our background and start in goats and a bit of the backstory with the herd.
I (Nancy) have always been an animal person, although I grew up in the city (mostly Boise, ID), I was a country girl at heart. My mother would call me Ellie May because I would always be bringing home some kind of critter or other as a kid. I went to college and earned my vet tech degree and license to be a certified veterinary technician (aka a veterinary nurse), continuing on to earn a bachelor's degree in Animal Science with the goal of attending veterinary school eventually. During school, I worked as a veterinary technician and decided that I did not want to be a veterinarian at all, I rather enjoyed being a vet tech.
We moved to Jackson, Wyoming after graduating college and I took a vet tech job there. Some time during my studies, my mother-in-law (Robin's mom) had a handful of goats and I fell in love with their personalities, and enjoyed watching the kids play and bounce around during our visits in the spring. I also found I enjoyed milking goats and the idea of my own supply of milk would be fun (uh oh! haha). We were renting in Jackson, but the property we were on was in the country and there was room for goats...there was even a shed they could live in!
We asked our landlord if it would be okay to get a couple of them, and she said yes, so we found two adorable Nigerian dwarf does, the start of our herd, in October of 2009. One was unregistered, and in milk, Cinnamon. The other was registered and supposedly pregnant, Lulu. We found a buck to borrow, to hopefully get Cinnamon pregnant. We saw signs of Lulu getting extra attention from the buck, but never saw anything with Cinnamon, so we started to suspect she may be pregnant. We drew blood on both does and found that in fact, Cinnamon was already pregnant (and we realized she might be fairly far along based on how she looked).
We did all the research we could and got their shelter as cozy and nice as we could, since we were expecting babies in the winter in such a cold place! Cinammon kidded in December of 2009 with twins- a buck and doe, and her and the kids were totally healthy and fine. Lulu did get bred by that buck we had borrowed and kidded with a single doe, our first registered kid to carry our herdname, which at the time was FMG (standing for Frosted Mini Goats based on a comment to a co-worker about how they would have frost on their fur in the mornings), FMG Peanut.
In the spring of 2010, I found out that Lulu's original breeder raised mini alpines in addition to the Nigerians. I learned all about them and thought they were interesting and she was only about 1.5 hours from Jackson, so we purchased a bottle doe kid from her, and later on another doe and buck. Unfortunately, we never received papers on those goats, and ended up selling them later. By that time, we were much more interested in registered goats, and considering showing. In August of 2010, while pregnant with my first child, we moved to Buhl and sometime that summer we bought a Nigerian buck kid, JDR Ranch MM Rokko Magnum.
We eventually sold Cinnamon and Lulu stuck around our herd and we milked and bred her but she was no show goat, and we found her a retirement home as an older doe. We could never get Peanut to wean no matter how long we separated her from Lulu, what sort of things we put on Lulu's teats to make them unpleasant or even with allowing Peanut's kids to nurse her (she would be nursing her dam, while her kids nursed!), so we sold her as well and never kept any other daughters from Lulu.
In the late spring of 2011, we decided to try breeding our own mini alpines and purchased some beautiful registered alpine doe kids from the Soldier-Mountain herd. Late that summer, we attended our first show, a local fair, and one of those alpine kids won Grand Champion (and thus began the show addiction!). We also decided to add a Nigerian doe that winter, and finally settled on a milking yearling in spring of 2012, Sage-Acres SHO Peachy Keen, who eventually became an SGCH and was a good milker, and many of our more milky does descended from her.
Peachy was the sweetest doe and a good girl from the beginning, but Robin was pretty skeptical and said things like, why did you buy this goat, she is hardly worth milking, etc. To be fair, she barely milked 2 lbs as a yearling, but she had been moved and was in a new home and environment, so I was giving her a little grace. She was an interesting goat to learn with, and our first real good Nigerian doe. She taught me a lot of patience. Her production doubled the second year and increased some more the third year.
Also in the spring of 2012, we showed at our first multi-ring show, and there was a mini show and an ADGA show, held simultaneously. We were running back and forth showing goats in both shows. We did this again in 2013, and our friend helped show Peachy while we were showing the minis. Suddenly she ran over asking for her papers, as Peachy had won in one of the rings! This was a big competitive show, so we were quite excited! I drove to the ADGA National Show in Colorado (10 hour drive) by myself to watch in July of 2012; what a fun and eye opening experience that was!
We continued showing and enjoying goats. For awhile we sold milk and cheese at farmer's markets under the Idaho Small Herd Exemption. In May of 2014, our second child was born and it was a fairly stressful time. By that point I was breeding alpines, Nigerians, AND mini alpines, and decided that the mini's, while they were great goats for production reasons, there were not as many options for non-ADGA goats as far as linear appraisal and shows, so we decided to sell them and stick to the alpines and Nigerians.
We learned that the ADGA National Show was going to be in Oregon in July of 2015. We changed our herdname that year to Springwater to make it more memorable. With Nationals in mind, and knowing that we did not have a lot of super competitive animals, but wanting to attend with something special, we researched and found the Sugar Moon herd and particularly liked certain individuals from that herd, but decided we were not ready to ship a goat in from that far. Much to our delight, while looking into the herds within driving distance of us, we found the Pholia Farm herd and loved their goats AND they had Sugar Moon Rocky Dolby, who was closely related to the Sugar Moon goats we loved! We figured that we could get a kid in 2014 and hope that she would be a competitive dry or milking yearling at Nationals the following year.
The doe kid we brought home was SGCH Pholia Farm RD Meet Virginia. Virginia freshened beautifully as a yearling! We decided to attend our first National show with a small number of goats so that it wouldn't be too stressful, especially with 2 small children. We chose not to bring alpines for that first time. Our friend suggested taking 4 milkers to have a dairy herd, which we did and we also brought 4 kids. I went in with not many expectations (though I did think Virginia would do well), and particularly figured my other yearling milker wouldn't even make the cut. Virginia's breeder came to Nationals to watch, and I am so happy she was there because Virginia was FIRST in her class! Blown away does not even begin to describe my feelings about that. Not only that but we made the cut in every single class and our worst placing was 11th! That yearling I didn't think would do well? She placed 9th in her class. Really, I was quite shocked.
Virginia went on to be a top ten milker in components and finish her championship the same year as her top ten record, as well as LA'd 90 and became an SG doe. She really did it all and kicked our herd up a notch! Sadly, she did not have a long life as we lost her fairly suddenly at age 5 in the fall. We were, however, able to obtain her littermate brother, Pholia Farm RD La Brea Legend who did great things in our herd and produced SGCH Springwater BL Janie's GotAGun (Frosty), probably our most well-known goat. We have also been lucky to use a Virginia son, Springwater AL Wait That's Me through both AI and live service. Because of our excellent results with Virginia and Legend, we purchased SG Sugar Moon NS Alejandro who was their cousin. He also did fantastic things in our herd for production and type.
Our second National Show was in 2019, we were again shocked and amazed to be recognized as the Reserve Premier Breeder, and SGCH FMG DB&R Easy As Pie AI, who was a Peachy granddaughter, became the Total Performer. Pie also had a couple of lactations where she was on the top ten lists for components. Virginia also earned a production award for High Lifetime Fat.
Since that time, we have attended 5 additional National shows and had many goats with high placings, production awards, etc. Frosty was first in her 3 year old class in 2021 and became the 2021 Total Performer that year! We could keep going with all this herd has accomplished, but it is already quite long!
I do want to talk about the large breed goats that have lived here for a minute. We ended up selling out of alpines after awhile. For brief periods of time over the years, we've had small numbers of saanens, lamanchas, guernseys, we even had a togg for a very short time...basically, every breed except for Nubians and sables have lived here. We got our start in oberhasli in 2021 with a lovely doe kid, Vanjust VMH Nevada. She is the foundation of our oberhasli herd and we have fallen absolutely in love with their temperament, size, and milk. They are inching their way into our herd more and more, and that we are not sad about.
I (Nancy) have always been an animal person, although I grew up in the city (mostly Boise, ID), I was a country girl at heart. My mother would call me Ellie May because I would always be bringing home some kind of critter or other as a kid. I went to college and earned my vet tech degree and license to be a certified veterinary technician (aka a veterinary nurse), continuing on to earn a bachelor's degree in Animal Science with the goal of attending veterinary school eventually. During school, I worked as a veterinary technician and decided that I did not want to be a veterinarian at all, I rather enjoyed being a vet tech.
We moved to Jackson, Wyoming after graduating college and I took a vet tech job there. Some time during my studies, my mother-in-law (Robin's mom) had a handful of goats and I fell in love with their personalities, and enjoyed watching the kids play and bounce around during our visits in the spring. I also found I enjoyed milking goats and the idea of my own supply of milk would be fun (uh oh! haha). We were renting in Jackson, but the property we were on was in the country and there was room for goats...there was even a shed they could live in!
We asked our landlord if it would be okay to get a couple of them, and she said yes, so we found two adorable Nigerian dwarf does, the start of our herd, in October of 2009. One was unregistered, and in milk, Cinnamon. The other was registered and supposedly pregnant, Lulu. We found a buck to borrow, to hopefully get Cinnamon pregnant. We saw signs of Lulu getting extra attention from the buck, but never saw anything with Cinnamon, so we started to suspect she may be pregnant. We drew blood on both does and found that in fact, Cinnamon was already pregnant (and we realized she might be fairly far along based on how she looked).
We did all the research we could and got their shelter as cozy and nice as we could, since we were expecting babies in the winter in such a cold place! Cinammon kidded in December of 2009 with twins- a buck and doe, and her and the kids were totally healthy and fine. Lulu did get bred by that buck we had borrowed and kidded with a single doe, our first registered kid to carry our herdname, which at the time was FMG (standing for Frosted Mini Goats based on a comment to a co-worker about how they would have frost on their fur in the mornings), FMG Peanut.
In the spring of 2010, I found out that Lulu's original breeder raised mini alpines in addition to the Nigerians. I learned all about them and thought they were interesting and she was only about 1.5 hours from Jackson, so we purchased a bottle doe kid from her, and later on another doe and buck. Unfortunately, we never received papers on those goats, and ended up selling them later. By that time, we were much more interested in registered goats, and considering showing. In August of 2010, while pregnant with my first child, we moved to Buhl and sometime that summer we bought a Nigerian buck kid, JDR Ranch MM Rokko Magnum.
We eventually sold Cinnamon and Lulu stuck around our herd and we milked and bred her but she was no show goat, and we found her a retirement home as an older doe. We could never get Peanut to wean no matter how long we separated her from Lulu, what sort of things we put on Lulu's teats to make them unpleasant or even with allowing Peanut's kids to nurse her (she would be nursing her dam, while her kids nursed!), so we sold her as well and never kept any other daughters from Lulu.
In the late spring of 2011, we decided to try breeding our own mini alpines and purchased some beautiful registered alpine doe kids from the Soldier-Mountain herd. Late that summer, we attended our first show, a local fair, and one of those alpine kids won Grand Champion (and thus began the show addiction!). We also decided to add a Nigerian doe that winter, and finally settled on a milking yearling in spring of 2012, Sage-Acres SHO Peachy Keen, who eventually became an SGCH and was a good milker, and many of our more milky does descended from her.
Peachy was the sweetest doe and a good girl from the beginning, but Robin was pretty skeptical and said things like, why did you buy this goat, she is hardly worth milking, etc. To be fair, she barely milked 2 lbs as a yearling, but she had been moved and was in a new home and environment, so I was giving her a little grace. She was an interesting goat to learn with, and our first real good Nigerian doe. She taught me a lot of patience. Her production doubled the second year and increased some more the third year.
Also in the spring of 2012, we showed at our first multi-ring show, and there was a mini show and an ADGA show, held simultaneously. We were running back and forth showing goats in both shows. We did this again in 2013, and our friend helped show Peachy while we were showing the minis. Suddenly she ran over asking for her papers, as Peachy had won in one of the rings! This was a big competitive show, so we were quite excited! I drove to the ADGA National Show in Colorado (10 hour drive) by myself to watch in July of 2012; what a fun and eye opening experience that was!
We continued showing and enjoying goats. For awhile we sold milk and cheese at farmer's markets under the Idaho Small Herd Exemption. In May of 2014, our second child was born and it was a fairly stressful time. By that point I was breeding alpines, Nigerians, AND mini alpines, and decided that the mini's, while they were great goats for production reasons, there were not as many options for non-ADGA goats as far as linear appraisal and shows, so we decided to sell them and stick to the alpines and Nigerians.
We learned that the ADGA National Show was going to be in Oregon in July of 2015. We changed our herdname that year to Springwater to make it more memorable. With Nationals in mind, and knowing that we did not have a lot of super competitive animals, but wanting to attend with something special, we researched and found the Sugar Moon herd and particularly liked certain individuals from that herd, but decided we were not ready to ship a goat in from that far. Much to our delight, while looking into the herds within driving distance of us, we found the Pholia Farm herd and loved their goats AND they had Sugar Moon Rocky Dolby, who was closely related to the Sugar Moon goats we loved! We figured that we could get a kid in 2014 and hope that she would be a competitive dry or milking yearling at Nationals the following year.
The doe kid we brought home was SGCH Pholia Farm RD Meet Virginia. Virginia freshened beautifully as a yearling! We decided to attend our first National show with a small number of goats so that it wouldn't be too stressful, especially with 2 small children. We chose not to bring alpines for that first time. Our friend suggested taking 4 milkers to have a dairy herd, which we did and we also brought 4 kids. I went in with not many expectations (though I did think Virginia would do well), and particularly figured my other yearling milker wouldn't even make the cut. Virginia's breeder came to Nationals to watch, and I am so happy she was there because Virginia was FIRST in her class! Blown away does not even begin to describe my feelings about that. Not only that but we made the cut in every single class and our worst placing was 11th! That yearling I didn't think would do well? She placed 9th in her class. Really, I was quite shocked.
Virginia went on to be a top ten milker in components and finish her championship the same year as her top ten record, as well as LA'd 90 and became an SG doe. She really did it all and kicked our herd up a notch! Sadly, she did not have a long life as we lost her fairly suddenly at age 5 in the fall. We were, however, able to obtain her littermate brother, Pholia Farm RD La Brea Legend who did great things in our herd and produced SGCH Springwater BL Janie's GotAGun (Frosty), probably our most well-known goat. We have also been lucky to use a Virginia son, Springwater AL Wait That's Me through both AI and live service. Because of our excellent results with Virginia and Legend, we purchased SG Sugar Moon NS Alejandro who was their cousin. He also did fantastic things in our herd for production and type.
Our second National Show was in 2019, we were again shocked and amazed to be recognized as the Reserve Premier Breeder, and SGCH FMG DB&R Easy As Pie AI, who was a Peachy granddaughter, became the Total Performer. Pie also had a couple of lactations where she was on the top ten lists for components. Virginia also earned a production award for High Lifetime Fat.
Since that time, we have attended 5 additional National shows and had many goats with high placings, production awards, etc. Frosty was first in her 3 year old class in 2021 and became the 2021 Total Performer that year! We could keep going with all this herd has accomplished, but it is already quite long!
I do want to talk about the large breed goats that have lived here for a minute. We ended up selling out of alpines after awhile. For brief periods of time over the years, we've had small numbers of saanens, lamanchas, guernseys, we even had a togg for a very short time...basically, every breed except for Nubians and sables have lived here. We got our start in oberhasli in 2021 with a lovely doe kid, Vanjust VMH Nevada. She is the foundation of our oberhasli herd and we have fallen absolutely in love with their temperament, size, and milk. They are inching their way into our herd more and more, and that we are not sad about.