Over the twenty years that the Saada herd has been in existance we have developed our own management methods and style. We will try to explain to you how we grow the big milky does that we like. But please keep in mind that we live in a specific climate with the facilities and feeds that are here. Each individual herd needs to look at the specifics of their own circumstances and develope management that is appropriate to them. We offer our suggestions to assist and to provide food for thought.

The first step in producing healthy, rapidly-growning kids is to have healthy does and bucks. Adults should be kept in proper flesh - not too fat and certainly not too thin. We keep minerals, iodized salt and baking power available free-choice for all of our animals. We offer kelp and brewers yeast and beet pulp at certain times of the year (the last six weeks of gestation, early lactation and during the breeding season). Clean fresh water is a must at all times. We prefer to use buckets for water, because they are easier for us to keep clean.

All births are attended and navels and hooves are dipped in 7% iodine. We feed newborns either heat-treated goat or cow colostrum - 2 to 4 oz. for one or two feedings. After that kids are fed up to six times a day for the first week, then four times a day for a month, then three times a day for a month, then two times a day for between one and two months, and finally once a day until they are weaned at between five and seven months old. Most people wean them younger than we do, but this works for us.

We bring gradually increase the amount of milk fed from 2 to 4 oz per feeding to 8 oz. over the first week or two. The amount continues to increase until they are getting a little over a half gallon per day. They continue with that amount per day until they go to once a day feedings, when we only give them a quart.

We begin offering a little grass hay and alfalfa hay after the first week. This too is increased as they begin to eat more of it. Initially you may have to remove old hay and offer fresh, as they won't finish it, but eventually you'll need to increase the quanity to around 2 or 3 lbs per kid per day, if you have no grazing available. We have pasture for our kids, so after the pasture green, we cut back on the hay as we feel the grazing is better for them. But there is always some grass/alfafa offered. This keeps their rumens able to digest properly in case severe weather forces us to keep the kids indoors or during travel and shows.

Any change of feed should be made gradually over 5 to 7 days, by mixing more and more of the new feed in with the previous feed stuffs. Or, in the case of beginning pasture feeding, limit the time they are allowed to graze for the first week. All of this care allows the rumens to grow enough of the correct bacteria to digest the new feed. Failure to allow for this can leave the animals open to acidiosis, diarrhea and/or bloating.

We don't offer grain until a two to four weeks before we go to once a day milk feedings. We believe the protein and calcium in milk is better utilized and less likely to lead to fat babies. Then we begin offering a very little bit of grain (usually a 20% protein pelleted form). By the time they are weaned ours are usually eating up to a pound each per day, more or less depending on their body condition

We usually divide kids up into groups not larger than around eight head. We try to keep thinner, younger or less aggressive eaters together and may hold them on more feedings and/or more milk if needed. We may include grain or sunflower seeds for the poorer doers at times, as well. We don't keep bucklings or wethers with doelings for longer than a couple of months as a rule, as they're too hard on them and tend to hog the food.

Doelings aren't bred until they are seven months of age or around 80 lbs. Most of ours can easily freshen at 12 to 16 months of age without any problem. In turn most of our bucklings can settle does by the time they are five to seven months old. The only difficulty we have seen is if they are sold as a either bred or milking yearlings and go into a herd whose feed doesn't include enough of certain minerals, protien, calcium and/or quantity, pasterns can get weak. We have never seen this problem with a first freshener that remains with us.

Hoof care is one of the more neglected regular needs of dairy goats, even when they get regular exercise via play or grazing. We try to trim our hooves once a month, beginning when kids are aroung eight weeks of age and continuing, ideally, for life. Unlike some bloodlines, our animals must have their heels as well as their toes trimmed. If this is not done, it gradually forces their knees to tip forward - imagine a person forced to wear high heels continually becoming higher and higher. Evenually the animal will begin walking on their knees as it is so painful for them to be on their hooves. Often the hooves of these animal will feel too warm as they are inflamed in a type of mechanical laminitis. All of this is entirely caused by insufficient trimming of the heel. However, even at this stage it is possible to partially or totally correct the condition if proper trimming is begun and continued.

We recommend that when hooves are trimmed the horizontal growth rings be parralleled and that the hooves be at the same depth at the toe and at the heel. If this hasn't been done in the animals past it may take a number of sessions to correct the hooves, but eventually they will "square up" and look like they did as young kids (the ideal shape for goat hooves).

Within the first year or two of Saada, we asked and then answered some questions for our herd's future direction that we highly recommend be considered by all goat breeders. Others may come up with answers different from ours and that's fine, as these aren't questions of "right and wrong", but rather philosophy and preferences. These questions included:

• what traites did we want to emphsize in our herd? We decided that we wanted to breed reliable milking animals with long, level lactations, good temperment, and good protein, fat percentages and volumn of milk from a well-attached and correct udder, with shaply, plumb teats, as opposed to being a show herd that freshened does with cute little udders, that milked only for the show season and then were dried off a few months later. We also decided that we prefered to breed toward a long, tall, elegant type with good breed characteristics. At the time we began there were many short, smooth indivituals and many big beefy (to our eyes at least) Nubians. We couldn't find what we wanted in any existing herd at the time, so we set out to "build" our own. This is not to suggest that those other breeders were wrong.  It's just that we saw a different  future for our breed.  We respectfully suggest you really think about the type of goat you want to breed. What do they look like and how do they perform? 
  
• How many breeds and how many animals will be kept? We also decided that we wanted to stay fairly small and keep Nubians exclusively. By staying a small herd of one breed we felt we could be more selective, would avoid crowding our animals, keep our herd within our financial abilities to maintain, and allow us to continue to enjoy the goats as indivituals. We have never regretted this decision as it not only eliminated many of the stresses we've seen in others' herds (both on the animas and their owners), but allowed us too make faster progress, because we had to continually cull down to our very most consistant blood lines. We began by establishing a maximum number of animals we would be at by winter each year. If decided if we hadnd't sold down to that quantity, then were would sales barn or butcher they extrasl
• How tolerent to be of diseases or genetic problems will you be? This is touchy stuff and every one should think long and hard about what course they intend to follow. In our own herd ,we decided that even the idea of making peace with CAE or CL or other cronic contagious diseases was not tolerable for us. We further decided that we would not maintain animals here that showed genetic problems (though we have made a couple of very short-termed exceptions over the years). We just don't want to have these things to worry about in our herd.

We will add more to this article in the future.