Quarterly Herd Update: Summer 2024!
We are here with the summer update on the herd, the crew, and the happenings on the ranch! Now that we have passed through Spring and are quickly progressing through the summer months, life on the ranch has fallen into a familiar rhythm of our daily tasks and chores. Every morning begins at 7 AM with our morning milking, which then flows into the goat walk into the hills, and then into the herd’s visits with the tour guests on our regularly scheduled tours. Each day ends with the goats being milked again at 4 pm, then heading down to the barn for their dinner and bedtime.
The herd’s daily goat walk consists of one of the dairy team members walking with the entire herd up the hill to wander on the plentiful land that surrounds their pasture. Goats are special creatures because they will follow their human companions all over the hillsides without the need for leashes due to their natural inclination to stay with their herd and their human protector. These daily walks encourage the herd to forage on the plentiful land that they have available to them, which stimulates their minds and keeps them fit, happy and healthy. We just started including the “keeper doelings” on these daily walks, which the little ladies have been absolutely loving!
The keeper doelings are the group of female goat kids who were born on the ranch this year and will be joining the milking herd next year. These girls are selected based on their lineage, their temperament, and their health, and this year we have kept more of them than any year prior!
While we usually keep between 6 and 12 doelings for our future milking herd, this year we selected 22 doelings to be our future milkers. Because these little critters have been hand raised by the dairy team, they are very used to being handled so have quickly taken to the idea of the goat walks. Even on their first walk before they understood what a goat walk was, they latched on to their human guides and followed them up into the hills as if they had been doing it all along. They quickly learned that goat walks can be very fun as they found a particularly hilly section of the ranch to practice their innate climbing skills. Their caretakers love to watch them skitter and frolic all over the hillside as they tear up and down the steep incline just as their wild ancestors have been doing for millennia.
As always, we thank you so much for your continued support! Us, the goats, and the entire Stepladder team couldn't do it without you!
♥️ Michelle & Jack Rudolph
