Our journey begins this year, in the fall of 2013.
We decided this spring to plan on testing our herd in the fall, when I had time off of work to really sit down and think about which animals to test, and how many to send in the first batch.
While waiting for the end of my busy season, I ordered blood draw supplies, educated myself on where to ship the samples, and how to package them correctly. I count myself lucky to have a mentor willing to walk me through the steps, and ease my fears about going about shipping the blood wrong, or not fast enough.
At the end of September, I was done with work for the summer, and ready to tackle the job of playing Chupacabra on my goats. (Goat Sucker- For those who don't know.) We set a date after talking to our mentor, who advised me to ship on a Monday, to get blood into the lab and not have it sitting in a post office over the weekend.
I initially wavered between testing just those goats that we saw as 'herd builders', the ones we would plan to keep offspring out of, or just biting the proverbial bullet and testing all of our registered stock. We decided to go ahead and test all adults on the first round. That way, we would know for the future possible status on kids born.
Now, you might be wondering about the rest of our herd... those poor lowly unregistered, or non-Nubian, and why we did not test them. The remainder of our herd consists of 3 Boer does that are 100% Boer, one Alpine, one Toggenburg, one, well, Molly, and one Boer/Nubian cross doe. We felt the risk to be very low on our Boer and Swiss breeds, and we tested the Boer/Nubian does dam. Molly will never have kids sold as breeding stock as she is far from breeding quality and of uncertain lineage. Males kids from any of these crosses to our Nubians will also, all be wethered.
We drew blood Sunday night, far more quickly than I had anticipated as our goats were very willing to be handled. Shipped the samples out Monday and had results back by Friday.
We sent in 8 Samples, 6 does and 2 bucks. Initially I expected to hear back that we had 3-4 carrier does, and at least 1 carrier buck. It just seemed how the odds would workout. When the results came in we had 5 Normal does, 1 Carrier Doe, 1 Normal buck, 1 Carrier Buck. (you can see the other blog for individual results)
Out of those 2 carriers, we have one daughter from both- Running River Diversion, and one son of our carrier buck, so of course we sent off round 2, Putting our total test count at 10 animals tested. When the results came in yesterday, it was Diversion- AFFECTED, Dream Big- Normal.
After discussing our options, we have decided to let Diversion (Diva) stay on here and document her journey through this life of hers with G6S. Many people would say to go ahead and put her down, she is not a benefit to anyone. We feel, there is something to be learned from observing her, and sharing our experience with the readers here.
We will also keep her dam on here, and manage her to our best ability. She is already bred for this January, and beyond that we will hold her in milk as long as possible, and when re-breeding her she will be bred to a Normal buck, or to a meat buck. Her male kids will be wethered, her female kids assumed to be carriers unless tested.
Diversion's Sire is being removed from our herd.
We decided this spring to plan on testing our herd in the fall, when I had time off of work to really sit down and think about which animals to test, and how many to send in the first batch.
While waiting for the end of my busy season, I ordered blood draw supplies, educated myself on where to ship the samples, and how to package them correctly. I count myself lucky to have a mentor willing to walk me through the steps, and ease my fears about going about shipping the blood wrong, or not fast enough.
At the end of September, I was done with work for the summer, and ready to tackle the job of playing Chupacabra on my goats. (Goat Sucker- For those who don't know.) We set a date after talking to our mentor, who advised me to ship on a Monday, to get blood into the lab and not have it sitting in a post office over the weekend.
I initially wavered between testing just those goats that we saw as 'herd builders', the ones we would plan to keep offspring out of, or just biting the proverbial bullet and testing all of our registered stock. We decided to go ahead and test all adults on the first round. That way, we would know for the future possible status on kids born.
Now, you might be wondering about the rest of our herd... those poor lowly unregistered, or non-Nubian, and why we did not test them. The remainder of our herd consists of 3 Boer does that are 100% Boer, one Alpine, one Toggenburg, one, well, Molly, and one Boer/Nubian cross doe. We felt the risk to be very low on our Boer and Swiss breeds, and we tested the Boer/Nubian does dam. Molly will never have kids sold as breeding stock as she is far from breeding quality and of uncertain lineage. Males kids from any of these crosses to our Nubians will also, all be wethered.
We drew blood Sunday night, far more quickly than I had anticipated as our goats were very willing to be handled. Shipped the samples out Monday and had results back by Friday.
We sent in 8 Samples, 6 does and 2 bucks. Initially I expected to hear back that we had 3-4 carrier does, and at least 1 carrier buck. It just seemed how the odds would workout. When the results came in we had 5 Normal does, 1 Carrier Doe, 1 Normal buck, 1 Carrier Buck. (you can see the other blog for individual results)
Out of those 2 carriers, we have one daughter from both- Running River Diversion, and one son of our carrier buck, so of course we sent off round 2, Putting our total test count at 10 animals tested. When the results came in yesterday, it was Diversion- AFFECTED, Dream Big- Normal.
After discussing our options, we have decided to let Diversion (Diva) stay on here and document her journey through this life of hers with G6S. Many people would say to go ahead and put her down, she is not a benefit to anyone. We feel, there is something to be learned from observing her, and sharing our experience with the readers here.
We will also keep her dam on here, and manage her to our best ability. She is already bred for this January, and beyond that we will hold her in milk as long as possible, and when re-breeding her she will be bred to a Normal buck, or to a meat buck. Her male kids will be wethered, her female kids assumed to be carriers unless tested.
Diversion's Sire is being removed from our herd.