My Angora goats.

Out the back!

5 years

by Amy in My Angora goats.

We loaded Ronald and Halt onto our trailer after they had a haircut and took them to meet the girls! My goat’s live right out the back of my family’s farm at the moment (one day they will be moved to our new place) it took us quite a while to get there as we had to go slowly over the bumps so we didn’t jostle the bucks, finally we arrived in “Bill’s bridge” paddock and I saw my does ( or nanny’s) We stopped and let the bucks out.

Ronald.

Me opening the gate!

FREEDOM!

The Doe’s stood and looked on from a distance, the bucks got off the trailer and started nibbling on some tea-tree…….then they ran off in the wrong direction!!

We saw them again when we were half way home, silly things! We left them to it, maybe hey will work it out themselves? Mum and I will check on them in a day or two to make sure they have joined up with the girls. I need lots of kids this year so they better sort themselves out!

Fiber.

5 years

by Amy in My Angora goats.

My new bucks needed to be shorn before they could go and meet my girls, if I left their long fiber on there was a chance they might get fly-strike or that they might just get so wet and sodden in winter that they would get cast on the ground and die. I have decided to call my bigger buck Ronald after the man who shore them, Mum was going to do it and then this man who had come to shoot geese told us he was a shearer, he shore them for us. My smaller buck I have called Halt after a character in a book I read.

Ronald’s fleece weighed 3.75kg and Halt’s weighed 2.5kg.

Ronald’s fleece in front.

Me checking the fiber for contaminates.

Once the fleeces are off the goats they need to be “skirted” which means any rough edg bits need to be removed and any stain or grass or sticks need to be taken out.

stained fiber and good fiber.

Then the fleeces are bundled into their own plastic bags and we sen them off to the buyers. When they get there they are classed into different categories depending on their length, style, character and type.

Kid fiber is worth the most money because it is finest (about 24-26 microns) “teenage goats” produce the next finest fiber and from then on it gets thicker with age. I am interested to hear how fine the fleeces are from my bucks because the finer it is the longer I can keep my adult goats in the future.