04/23/2026
Whew! We are recovering from our linear appraisal yesterday, and I am walking away with a head full of knowledge and heart full of humble. We made a lot of hard choices this spring, and I am very excited with the direction our young group of does is headed.
There is so much valuable information to take in during appraisal, and we learn something each time with having an objective evaluation of the herd. I am a numbers girl, and seeing those numbers and hearing the reasoning behind it, helps me to see the whole goat and our strengths and weaknesses. And, what we need to work on!
We were fortunate to receive some fantastic scores, which makes all the hard work (and sometimes tears) worth it. The herd is quite young again, with most of my milking string two years old and younger and first fresheners. I was in tears last night while sitting in the barn taking it all in, and very proud of how hard these girls are working for us.
A HUGE thank you to ADGA for this program and especially the appraisers that travel across the US, and even more so to Danielle Boyd of MerryTale Farm for inviting us to her farm and appraisal session. It takes a lot of effort and time to put this together, and we appreciate it more than she knows. Also, thank you to Ryleigh and Jayden for grabbing the girls for a photoshoot while we were appraising.
I'll post the scores and pictures later, but I am very pleased to hint that half of the mature does here at Tule Creek now carry a score of 90 or above