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Our Philosophy
We believe in providing healthy, correct, and productive animals that are matched to your needs. We are working diligently to continually improve the overall quality of our herd and the off-spring they produce. While we do not milk regularly, we are committed to producing a functional, miniature dairy goat and, as a qualified DHIA milk tester, I do conduct one-day milk tests when requested. While we love the various colors and patterns that so distinguish the Nigerian Dwarfs, we do not breed specifically for those characteristics. If you visit our Bachelor Pad, Girls Dorm, or Sale Barn you will see the wide variety of colors, patterns, and occasional blue eyes in our herd. We just enjoy the surprises that come at kidding time!
Herd Health & Care - We run a closed herd and have a separate quarantine pen where all animals new to our farm are placed pending health checks and tests. In order to protect our animals from many potential problems, no new animal is released into the main herd until we are satisfied as to its healthiness.
We keep all of our goats up-to-date on vaccinations (CD&T, Rabies Equine Vaccine, Lepto 5-Way). We have an established Worming program; however, we worm only after performing fecal checks to ensure that we do not worm excessively or for the wrong organisms. We do our own disbudding soon after birth. We do everything we can to ensure good health in our herd. We began annual testing of our entire herd for CAE & Brucellosis in 1998 and every animal in our herd has always been negative. We are state-tested and Vet-certified as free of CAE. We also test for TB when we go to shows outside Texas and no animal in our herd has ever tested positive. We have never had abscesses in our herd and we are currently enrolled in the voluntary Scrapie eradication program (ID # TX-126) with the intention of being certified. Because we know that our dams are healthy and disease-free, all our kids are raised on their dams because we believe that makes them healthier. To ensure their friendliness, every kid is handled several times a day and, after weaning, all kids not "adopted" are kept in a separate pasture until they are about 4 months so that we can continue to handle and socialize them without interference from the main herd or help from the donkey.
Our program includes maintaining proper, clean living areas with adequate forage and fresh water. Every pasture has appropriate housing, play areas (they love big crates and wire spools), and plenty of trees for shade from the Texas sun. Housing areas are cleaned and disinfected weekly, which can be a challenge during the winter when the goats don't want to go outside and prefer to stay inside and "help" us. We feed a pelleted, medicated goat chow mixed with black-oiled sunflower seeds (for a shiny coat) and diatomaceous earth (for worm control). During those time when our pasture quality is not as good as we desire (especially in the hot Texas summers), we supplement with alfalfa and coastal hay. Free choice minerals and mineral/salt blocks are also provided in each pasture.
Because we do all of these things, it allows us to guarantee the health of our goats at the time of purchase.
Breeding Program - Highpoint Farm is striving to breed Nigerian dwarfs with pleasant temperaments, good milk production and correct conformation while maintaining their miniature size. We focus on temperament, sociability, and milk production because our primary markets have been individuals just starting as breeders, families looking for pets, or homesteaders seeking milking goats. We have found that homesteaders prefer the Nigerians because of their size, temperaments, ease of maintenance, and the quality and quantity of milk produced in proportion to their size. We do try to eliminate undesirable traits in our herd and believe that we are steadily improving the overall quality or our herd; in doing so, we also have been able to produce winners in the show ring. Our herd includes the genetics of many outstanding bloodlines including Master Champions (MCH); this information can be found in the pedigrees provided on our herd in the Bachelor Pad, Girls Dorm, or Sale Barn pages. If you want additional pedigree information on any of these animals, just contact us. Our goats are registered with both the American Goat Society (AGS) and the Nigerian Dwarf Goat Association (NDGA) so that you have the option of participating in shows sanctioned by either registry.
Please visit our other pages and take a look at our goats and their performance. Just remember that all goats do not pose well for pictures and that we are not professional photographers, so we would love to have you come visit and select your own goat from our herd.
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