The Circle of Life....

Whilst we are still coming to terms with the loss of our little boy Spencer, a ray of hope has pierced the gloom: Bramble gave birth to 2 live baby goats - the first for the Willowbrook Stud. This was unexpected, for although we knew she was pregnant, from the dates we were given she was not due for another month. Both the kids are girls, and are unrelated to our ram, Bracken, as Bramble was pregnant by another ram when we purchased her, so we now have 3 does for Bracken to cover next year.

We have registered with the NZ Boer Goat Breeders Association and are planning to register our goats and the rest of our animals with the NZ Rare Breeds Conservation Society

The boys were quite jealous of all the attention Bramble and her little kids were getting...

We also had a big planting weekend this weekend gone, planting nearly 2000 trees. I shall post some photos once I have finished drawing the overall park design and layout maps, so that visitors can see which photos belong to which part of the park.

Introducing Bracken and Bramble, and Chestnut...

Yesterday we went to a place called Hunua, east of Auckland to pick up the lastest addtion to the Willowbrook Park Rare Breeds Farm - 3 Boer goats: a Buck - Bracken, a Doe - Bramble, and a little Wether called Chestnut...

Above: Chestnut

Above: Bramble

Below: Bracken

Boer goats developed in South Africa from an indigenous breed with the addition of some European, Angora and Indian breeds. The name comes from the Dutch word “boer” meaning “farmer” and was used to distinguish them from Angora goats which were imported into South Africa during the nineteenth century.

The present day Boer goat appeared in the early 1900s when South African farmers started selecting for a meat type goat.

The Boer goat is a large animal and is a specialized meat-producer. Landcorp first imported embryos of the breed into New Zealand in 1989 but they did not become commercially available until the mid-1990s when they were released from quarantine.

In New Zealand, purebred bucks are often used in grading-up programmes: many dairy goat farmers use a boer buck over some of their dairy goats does to produce kids that reach their goal weight faster than a purebred dairy goat kid would.

Each purebred is tagged, and registered with the NZ Sheep breeders association (previously the NZ Boer Goat Breeders assoc).

We can now start our own Boer Goat Stud, with a Buck and a Doe, but best of all, the Doe is already pregnant, and possibly expecting twins. We will keep you in touch this September. They are very cute animals, very agile, and ever so intelligent. They don't stop following you around the field all day, and aren't aggressive, like many goats are portayed. But, they are challenging our hitherto fine fencing, so before we loose our orchard to a midnight goat rampage, we will have to start doing some reinforcing.

Other species of goats can be very cute as well...