I hope you all are enjoying a small reprieve from the summer heat, it has been so oppressive and hot here, that with the rain we have had the past few days it has cooled things down. I cannot believe we are at the beginning of August already and our show season is done for the year! Lets get back to recapping our 2024 ADGA National experience! Once we were able to get past day 1 of set up and the craziness associated with it we settled into a bit of a routine. We would get up, have breakfast and then Rob would head over to his booth, while Avery and I started taking care of the goats, milking, feeding, throwing hay and cleaning their stalls. This mostly took until around 11:30 which was her lunch time as nap time for her is at noon, so we would head back to the trailer, I would make her lunch and she would lay down for her nap. After her 2-3 hour nap we would head back over to see Rob and hang out with the goats.
Day 3 was almost as challenging as day 1, because I was tasked with washing all of the goats with a 20 month old. You would think that because she loves water and goats it should be a slam dunk, but we encountered several challenges getting our task completed. The first was the wash bay area was very loud for some reason, which was scary to our daughter and the second was there was so much other fun stuff that was more fun then playing with water and goats with her mom....... Kudos to the people in our isle with candy that I was able to bribe her with a small piece of candy each trip back and forth with the goats. The last trip tested my willpower, as I had to carry Avery, a bucket, soap, a hose and lead a goat, but we were able to get it completed! It truly made my day that another exhibitor noticed how had I was working, and told me I was doing a good job as a mom, it truly made my day.
Thankfully, show day came and my parents arrived mid day to take over Avery duty, so I could show. I truly could not be more thankful for my parents making the 6 hour drive to Louisville to allow me to show my goats, without them our experience would have been completely different! We started off the show strong with our home bred doe Udderly Wicked Farms VT Abby placing 7th out of 97 goats in the Jr Kid class! We could not have been more excited about how she did! It show me that our breeding plans are going in the right direction, and I hope to see her improve as she ages and freshens! The Nigerian classes were absolutely massive and none of our other goats made the top 20 cut, but I was proud of how they looked and behaved! We are already looking forward to 2025 Nationals and we hope to have some exciting AI's that we are going to try this fall!
Stay tuned for the wrap up of our show season and plans for next year!! Take care, stay cool and dry and happy goating!
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