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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I'm really thinking about backing off the dairy goat keeping and
> concentrating on keeping a dairy cow and a steer or two. One or two
> milk goats is enough for me.
> 

Right, don't be too eager to back out altogether.  We have two dairy cows 
now and there are still gaps in the freshening cycles.  Like right now, the 
cow due in June is rapidly drying off.  But we have freshly freshened (?) 
goats to fill in the gap.

My guess is that soon goats or cows trained to hand milk will be a valuable 
sale or trade commodity.  Ushi-san is Jersey bred to Jersey and if the dice 
roll to a heifer, we plan on raising the cow and training her to hand milk 
(which is easy for anyone to do, but sounds nice for a newbie looking for a 
cow).   After a couple of years of nearly all billies, we've got several 97% 
Nubian nannies that we will likewise train up for hand milking.

We're going to double or quaduple the rabbits this year.  No one within 60 
miles is selling meat breed foundation stock so I'm encouraging younger 
daughter (the Haas-Meister) to raise up some stock for sale.

James

If I were near you, I'd be very interested in that billy.  Ours is 
magnificient, but now related to all and sundry.  Time to switch.</HTML>