January 26,2013 Welbian Farm Update

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.   It is such a beautiful time of the year and seems to bring out the best in us!  I love Christmas time with all the Christmas music and  decorations and good spirit.

We have been busy here at Welbian Farm since our last visit.   We decided that we needed to cut back on the number of animals as we are not getting any younger!  We reduced our Lamancha herd down to our CH Sweetie Pie and her daughter who will be a dry yearling.  Our Shady Lawn buck  Crusader went to Kathy Gigas in Maine and we hope he gives her some beautiful babies.

We also reduced our Alpines and just kept the Waiilatpu sisters who are now 11 and will stay with us until they die.  We also kept Christal Clum's two does who are 8 and 7.  Most of our does are getting on in age!
We sold our Spotlight Sale buck Kickapoo-Valley Zeus to a nice young man in Canada although against our better judgment (remember we were cutting back) bred him to Cherubim and Lainey!  We also kept Cherubim's twin does from last year.  Glen likes his Alpines and we will be taking back our Cherubim/Sasin son in the spring to linebred on the doe kids.

The Nigerians are all gone . We enjoyed them and so did the grandchildren and  I admire the folks that can show them because I would never be able to straighten up again !!

We will always have Toggenburgs!  We are so pleased with the young stock that are the result of our Spot Light Sale buck Rowe's Falcon  Rendezvous breedings.  He reminds me so much of  Sun-Kissed Whinchezter in that he is throwing consistency and mammaries like Whin did.   We have a son out of Madison and Rendezvous, Mad Max, who will have daughters in milk this spring and we are looking forward to seeing them.   Jeff Klein has his full brother.  Madison will be 13 in March . I don't think she will have kids this year  but time will tell.  We are excited to have one of our Tavoli daughters AI'd to Welbian Farm's Whin's Badger.    We  have kept two  Togg buck from our 2012  kiddings: A Tavoli/Flashpoint son and a Round Robin /Mad Max son.

We have become quite fond of our growing Saanen herd.  I always put my foot in my mouth and remember saying many year ago that I didn't like color breeds as you could never tell them apart.  Now I sit with egg on my face as usual as our 3 main breeds are color breeds!!!  We were blessed to get a wonderful start in Saanens from such breeder as Billy Woodwood, Kristin Loughlin, Joan Zahnizer, and our dear friend, Jean Hurlburt who would have never given up her babies if she didn't have to . CH McQuitty Farm WMV Macabee has produced some beautiful offsprings for us.  He is getting some age on him so we purchased a young buck from Kristen Loughlin this past fall that will line breed well with our lines.   We also added a Hi-Land Lotus son from Jean.  Our Hi-Land  does have had a year to settle in their new home and we are anxious to see them at their best this year.

We cut back quite a bit on our Oberhasli last year as we now have decided what we want in our Obers.  We sent Sparkling Acres Hot Shot to visit with Dave and Sally Graybill, owners of the  Owl-Ridge Oberhasli herd and they in return sent us Devonshire Finite Moment who is the littermate brother to CH Devonshire Finesse who we lost this past year.   He has beautiful general appearance like his sister and has some lovely daughters!  We have also used Heaven Hollow's Abel quite a bit this year .We brought back a Cream of Kansas doe that we had let out for a few years.  Beth Kennelly has a nice daughter out of her down in Florida so we are excited to see what she has.

Now we are preparing for a busy kidding season as we have about 40 does bred and we hand bottle feed all the kids.  (Yes , we really are crazy!!) Last year we kidded out almost 60 does so we are making progress.   We will update our website as kids are born.

Hopefully I can get my son , who has been quite busy, to finish updating the Oberhasli and Togg website.  My goal this year is pictures!!!  Please feel free to also join our page on Facebook.

Hope everyone has a wonderful kidding season .   Donna, Glen , and Mike