Tribute to Rasberry : January 26, 2000 - April 21, 2010

LaVerne's Rasberry Baret gave up life overnight after 10 great years of service and companionship. This picture is her a couple months ago before she had her last set of twins. Ten years, twenty kids, and ten productive years of milk production are just some of the distinctions this grand old lady takes across the rainbow bridge with her.

She has always been a very special doe to me for many reasons. She was bred by my dear friend in Delta Colorado, LaVerne Charles, and was not bottle raised like the goats we have and therefore not very people friendly. She was definitely a one-man goat. My goat. Even Al would have troubles at time getting her in for milking if she was inclined toward tempermental. And if you asked friends and neighbors who have helped with chores when we were out of town, she was always a handful. But never for me.

She is a cross-bred dairy goat. She is half LaMancha and half Oberhasli. She gets her beautiful bay color with the black trim from the Oberhasli color pallete and both the LaMancha and Oberhasli breeds are enjoyed for their mild mannered personalities.

At age 4, she had many triumphs. She was Grand Champion Recorded Grade dairy goat at an ADGA sanctioned show. The pictures of her being posed are from that show. She did not show again after that year. Later that summer, she contracted a very tough case of mastitis which nearly took her from us then. But with her strong will and the right medications and love, she survived. The triumph of survival was not without its price it resulted in the lost of one half of her udder. But she continued to produce kids and milk right up to the end with her half udder. At the end she was still producing nearly a gallon of milk a day with her one function side.

Today we will give her body back to the earth with her memory firmly planned with us for a lifetime. She leaves behind last year's and this year's doe kids with us and her 3 year old daughter is soon to freshen at a nearby dairy.

May Rasberry rest in peace.

Meet the Goats - Daisy

Daisy (Matrix YB Daisy if anyone is a goat breeder and wants to see her pedigree on adga.org) is a 3 year old purebred LaMancha doe. She is perfect in every attribute of breed character, milk production and temperment. She will not kid this year until around the first of May and we are in the process of drying her off from her last freshening last April. Almost 12 months fresh and still milking strong!

Daisy goes back to many of the goats I started out with in my previous herd under the Drucken-Hanks name with excellent stock from South Fork, Jerita, Altrece, Velvet Acres and others. I have believed in these lines for the past 12 years and they continue to contribute to the strong breeding program of the Matrix herd.

We will try to introduce you to each of our small herd over the next few weeks. If this sounds like a repeat, well it is. I had intentions of doing this last fall but returning to full time work with a busy travel schedule just did not allow. But Al and I both are committed to showing off our critters!

Next on the list--Daisy's 2 year old daughter, Dogoszhi.

Meet Our Goats - The Series

Matrix Compound is home to a beautiful herd of LaMancha and LaMancha/Cross dairy goats. All of our goats are registered/recorded with the American Dairy Goat Association (http://www.adga.org/) and we rarely will sell a goat without registration.

I plan to start a series featuring each of our amazing goats. It will take a bit for Al and me to coordinate getting "showy" pictures that I can blog about. We currently have six does (females) in milk and six young doelings to freshen next year. We have more bucks than I care to admit but there are plans to use them all this year on one girl or the other.

We plan our breedings (remember I bore people with pedigrees :-)) and separate does into pens and add in a buck in order to pen breed around the middle of November. Since goats have a 5 month gestations, we like to start kidding mid-April.

Stay tuned as we begin to introduce the girls and boys of the Matrix Compound goat herd.

Pictured: Denali (black) and Yucatan (blonde) - both yearling LaMancha bucks

--End of Chapter--