Homesteading with our Nigerian Dwarf
dairy herd in Arizona
At La Buena Vida Farm, we live a wonderful homesteading lifestyle and enjoy the abundance that God provides. We started our small herd in 2008 with no experience in farming or goat husbandry whatsoever. Our family has come to absolutely love our Nigerian Dwarf goats because they are the perfect homesteading animals! Our Nigerian Dwarf goats give us ample rich, sweet milk to drink. We also use their milk to make a variety of cheeses, kefir, and sweet deserts like Cajeta! The goat manure is collected and composted, then put back into our organic gardening system. We keep our herd numbers small to ensure our time is available to dedicate lots of love and attention for each animal needs (yes, our goats are very spoiled!) We raise our Nigerian Dwarf goats with a natural and holistic approach to animal husbandry. We try as much as possible to dam raise all kids that are born here. We feel this plays a very important role in the overall health and well-being of both the kids and their dam. That being said, we do bottle train our babies to a take a bottle so when it comes for our monthly milk testing the kids are ready and willing to accept a bottle (of their own mothers milk) for that 24 hour period. Our goat kids are always very friendly because they are all handled and loved on daily.
Our focus is high quality production with improved genetics for dairy character, strong structural support and good temperament.
In April 2014, we began year round DHIA (305 day) milk testing through ADGA's performance program with Langston University DHIA lab. In 2016, in addition to milk testing, we got involved with the Linear Appraisal program through ADGA. Our herd planning and selection is structured and evaluated through the information gathered from these programs and overall performance on our farm. Since we starting participating in ADGA performance programs from 2016 to 2019 our herd has produced TEN does who have achieved their Superior Genetics designation, one 2017 ELITE doe, one 2022 ELITE doe and SIX does who have achieved a score of 90 or higher on linear appraisals.
Our authentic Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats are working farm animals that our family has come to depend on for a variety of quality homesteading dairy products. We believe that correct structure will support a doe in her long career as a working asset to our farm. Our animals are very easy to work with and have pleasant temperaments. Because we are a working homesteading farm, we have a strict culling policy. We only breed and offer for sale what we feel are the highest quality animals, meeting the Nigerian Dwarf Goat breed standards. All goats in our herd are registered with American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA).
BIOSECURITY: Our herd is closed to protect our animals from diseases like CL, CAE, and Johnes. We do not offer buck services. We have done periodic testing randomly over the years, all with negative results. We rarely bring in new animals, but when we do it’s always from a trusted, confirmed negative herd. We started lightly showing our animals in 2021 and we ensure very strict biosecurity practices while outside our farm. We are now doing yearly biosecurity tests to confirm our herd maintains a disease free status.
