Our Goats
For information on 2019 kids, click HERE.
We just love our dairy goats - we have several does that we milk. Our goats are all Nubians or Nubian crosses. We have one enduring goat from our original goat purchase of two doelings in 2013. Her name is Nickel, and she is an unregistered Nubian/Sanaan. Every spring, we think about selling her because she isn't registered, but she throws some of the best looking kids and produces a gallon of milk at her peak; we just can't part with her yet papers or not. Then we have dear Llama (who has an interesting story behind her name). Although Llama is papered as a 50% registered grade Nubian, she has 100% Nubian blood. A goat in her lineage had lost paperwork issues, and thus, she's only 50% registered. In the spring of 2017, we also added an adorable little tri-colored doeling named Lily. She's a sweetheart who was bottle-fed. That's our happy little herd of 3 goats. We also typically have a breeding buck in the fall. Due to lack of pasture space, we usually resell our breeding buck in the winter.
People ask us all the time, "So why do you milk goats?" It all began as a money-saving venture. (You can read more about here on our blog.) As our family grew from my hubby and I to us plus four kiddos, our grocery bill grew as well. Especially the milk! We found ourselves lugging four to five expensive gallons of milk home from the store every week. We began joking about owning a family milk cow. After realizing that owning a cow wasn't practical on our 3.5 acres, nor was it very affordable, our jokes turned to owning a goat. Neither one of us was familiar with milking goats, and we both thought surely goat milk tasted "goaty" and gross! Nevertheless, one day, my husband came home with a gallon of goat milk from a friend. We both smelled it suspiciously and sipped it cautiously. We looked at each other and said, "It tastes like milk!" Thus began our goat journey! We had lots to learn - breeds, feeds, fencing, milking, vaccinating, and on and on. Our first milking experience was chasing Vanilla, a alpine/nubian cross, around our garage. She had never been milked, and we had never milked. We had no milking stand, and the experience yielded little to no milk. My husband built a milking stand the next day, and we plunged on. Eventually, Vanilla learned, and so did we. Now we enjoy the milk in many ways - just a plain old glass of cold milk, yogurt, ice cream, cooking, and freezing for their "dry time" before kidding.
People ask us all the time, "So why do you milk goats?" It all began as a money-saving venture. (You can read more about here on our blog.) As our family grew from my hubby and I to us plus four kiddos, our grocery bill grew as well. Especially the milk! We found ourselves lugging four to five expensive gallons of milk home from the store every week. We began joking about owning a family milk cow. After realizing that owning a cow wasn't practical on our 3.5 acres, nor was it very affordable, our jokes turned to owning a goat. Neither one of us was familiar with milking goats, and we both thought surely goat milk tasted "goaty" and gross! Nevertheless, one day, my husband came home with a gallon of goat milk from a friend. We both smelled it suspiciously and sipped it cautiously. We looked at each other and said, "It tastes like milk!" Thus began our goat journey! We had lots to learn - breeds, feeds, fencing, milking, vaccinating, and on and on. Our first milking experience was chasing Vanilla, a alpine/nubian cross, around our garage. She had never been milked, and we had never milked. We had no milking stand, and the experience yielded little to no milk. My husband built a milking stand the next day, and we plunged on. Eventually, Vanilla learned, and so did we. Now we enjoy the milk in many ways - just a plain old glass of cold milk, yogurt, ice cream, cooking, and freezing for their "dry time" before kidding.
A testimonial from a family who purchased Russell Homestead goats...
We purchased two Nubian goat kids in March 2016 from Vanessa Russell and could not be happier. Both goats are exceptional in both quality and temperament. Our children are so enjoying their new pets. Vanessa was wonderful and a blessing to us as we ventured into bottle feeding goat kids for the first time. She was available for questions and had great suggestions to help the process. Thank you, Vanessa, for a great experience and two much loved goats.