Well, we've reached a milestone in the countdown to kidding time. Tonight we put the nannies in the barn. Tomorrow and Thursday we shear. Then we wait, and check, wait some more, check some more. The first kid of 2009 will be goat # 402. Hard for us to believe that we have had 401 Angora kids born on the farm. This number pales in comparison to Texas Angora numbers but for us it represents 15 + years of painstakingly breeding for a "better" fiber animal. Progress is slow. Rule of thumb is it may take 10 generations to breed finer fiber onto your animals. We have focused on this trait in our herd. Fine fiber is what goes into our products. The longer an animal produces a fine grade of hair, the more productive the animal is for us. With little exception, all of our adult animals are producing a kid or yearling grade of fiber. Most of our fiber is sold "raw" to other fiber mills and farms, or used for our own products - we only use kid. Any fiber we do not use is shipped to warehouses in Texas where customers come from all over the world to purchase high quality American mohair.So, tomorrow we begin our spring harvest....
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