Law Bottom Miniatures

Directions

Law Bottom Miniatures Miniature Zebus, ADGA registered Nigerian Dwarfs, and barnyard shenanigans

I did a post the other day about the bride that got scammed and talked about our venue. I thought I would share some pic...
10/19/2026

I did a post the other day about the bride that got scammed and talked about our venue. I thought I would share some pictures of our two venues. These are not from the wedding in my post, I don’t have those yet, but just wanted to show y’all the other thing that keeps me so busy lol. Help me think of some more goat topics to cover. Drop your ideas in comments and if I feel like I know enough about it, I will do an info post on it.

This is my sweet old man Bingo. If there was one goat on the farm that I could copy and paste, it would be him. Yesterda...
10/19/2026

This is my sweet old man Bingo. If there was one goat on the farm that I could copy and paste, it would be him. Yesterday we went to get our round bales for the winter. We always store one up on its flat side under the side shed and we pull off of it to put in feeders in the stalls. Bob had the bale and was about to dump it on it side. I went to kick the plastic pallet over a little so that the bale would be centered on it. When I did I felt an electric shock go up my back. I literally did nothing and my back went out. I pushed through to get the hay situated and went to the house to get my back brace. I took it easy the rest of the day. Feeding time rolled around and I went out with Bob to do it. We get out there and Oo La La is at the buck fence. Dang it! She is the hardest goat I have to catch. I knew there was no way I could run around chasing and juking to get her caught. I got the leash and went to get Bingo. I explained to him that my back was hurting so I needed him to walk in a pen with 20 does and be on his best behavior. He looked me in the eye like he was listening to every word. I led him through the gate and even though he wanted to talk to all of the girls a slight tug on the leash reminded him of our discussion. I led him through the cow gate to where Oololly was still standing at the buck fence. She started walking off because of me but Bingo wooed her back over, promptly covered her and she walked off doing the the hunch that a bred doe does. He wanted to follow and jumped toward her but I pulled on the leash and he stopped to let me catch up. She walked in the cow stall and Bingo waited for me to hobble in there with him. He bred her again and then calmly walked through the other does that had gathered and back to his stall. Bingo is such a great buck in so many ways. I truly think he understood that he had to behave. He wanted to check the other girls but he didn’t argue the point. I so dread the day that he is no longer in the breeding rotation. He will always be in the breeding plan as long as he is able. Some bucks are just irreplaceable. Who is your irreplaceable guy?

Let’s talk about precocious udders. Precocious udder is when a goat develops an udder without being bred. It can even ha...
10/17/2026

Let’s talk about precocious udders. Precocious udder is when a goat develops an udder without being bred. It can even happen with bucks. Yep you are looking at what you think you are looking at! I took this photo from the Goat Journal, an online subscription service that I have. Precious udder is fairly common in dairy goats from high production lines. It usually goes away if left alone. You should never milk it out unless you plan to continue milking your does. I wouldn’t recommend buck milk lol. It isn’t a big deal but it does warrant keeping an eye on to make sure there is no heat or redness or that it is hard which are indicators of mastitis. There are several causes for it. You see it a lot in young does that have not been bred yet and old does that are going through hormone changes. Another common cause is foraging on clover and that is the reason I’m talking about it now. In late fall and early spring, if you have clover in your pasture, goats tend to eat more of it because it is only thing still green. Clover produces estrogen. Consuming a lot of it can trigger precocious udder. It takes a lot of people by surprise when they see it if they don’t know it is a thing that can happen. I’ve never had a buck with an udder but I have had several does develop one. The best action is to do nothing and just monitor but it is at least good to be aware that it can happen especially if you have a lot of clover in your pasture.

Goats in coats? There are a few cases where they are appropriate. If you have a goat that has been clipped for a show or...
10/17/2026

Goats in coats?
There are a few cases where they are appropriate. If you have a goat that has been clipped for a show or one that is off feed and not ruminating. If a goat has blown its coat because of hormone imbalances or having had a high fever or one that is zinc deficient so it has a thin coat and lacking cashmere. However, in most cases coats are detrimental in keeping your goat warm. There is nothing that we can buy that is as warm and efficient as what God gave them. While putting a coat on your goat may make you feel warm and fuzzy it actually prevents them from being warm and fuzzy. A goat’s winter coat consists of a long outer layer of guard hairs that protect from moisture and a very thick under layer of cashmere. You see that on your fences in the spring. These two layers work together to insulate the goat. When it is cold the goat contracts its skin to fluff air into its cashmere. This is called Piloerection. You know, that puff ball look. Their body heat warms that air and the cashmere holds it to their body to keep them warm. When you put a coat on your goat it compacts that outer layer of hair and disrupts the Piloerection process and disables their natural insulating ability. There is no synthetic insulation that we can put on them that is warmer than what they can do for themselves. The best way to help your goats stay warm is to make sure that they have a dry, draft free shelter, a deep bed of insulating straw and hay available at all times inside of that shelter. Their rumen is their internal heat engine. Rumination heats them from the inside out. It is hard to see our babies shivering but that is part of the heating process as well. So when they look like pitiful shivering puff balls resist the temptation to put a coat on them. You are actually keeping them from being as warm as they possibly can be.

C&D antitoxin back in stock on Jeffers and several other sites. Better order it while it lasts. This is not the vaccine....
10/16/2026

C&D antitoxin back in stock on Jeffers and several other sites. Better order it while it lasts. This is not the vaccine. This is the treatment. I put the links in comments to the two places that I found it.

This is going to be goat related but I’m livid right now. Most of you know we own a wedding venue on top of the farm foo...
10/16/2026

This is going to be goat related but I’m livid right now. Most of you know we own a wedding venue on top of the farm foolery. There are actually two venues on the property. This weekend we have a Saturday wedding in the big barn venue and a Sunday wedding in the smaller cabin venue (pictured). The Saturday bride came earlier in the week to decorate and the Sunday bride came this morning. I met her up there to show her where everything was and make sure she had everything she needed. When she got there she was squalling. She had hired a wedding coordinator out of “Nashville”. The coordinator was going to do all the decorating and handle everything. Well the coordinator was a scammer. This poor girl had sent her tons of money and all her dreams and now she has vanished. The bride had a few things but no idea what to even do with what she had. I have a huge decor room full of everything you can think of. I told her to show me her messages to this woman so I could see the inspiration pictures. I read a couple of the messages and it was obvious that this was someone in another country. I went to the decor room and whipped out some arrangements for her tables and arbor. I grabbed some things and put together her look for her tables in her colors. By the time I was finished she was squalling again, but this time it was tears of joy because I had given her wedding day dreams CPR and they were well and good and even better than what she had paid for. Now to bring this around to goats. There are scammers out there trying to sell goats, mini donkeys, miniature highland calves and any other thing you can think of. If you are looking to buy something from someone on facebook please do your homework. Get on their profile and snoop around. Look at their friends, check-ins, likes. If they are all in Nigeria then move on. Pay attention to grammar, terminology and syntax in their messages. You can pick up on incorrect usage. Google search pictures to make sure they didn’t come from somewhere else. Pay attention to the background of the pictures. If they all look like they are from a different place then be careful. Scammers steal my pictures all the time. If they say delivery only then that is a hard pass. Ask questions that goat people should know using terminology they should know and see what they say. Do not pay anyone a deposit if they won’t allow you to come see the animal first. That doesn’t mean you have to go see it if it is far away but ask anyway to see what they say. Ask to FaceTime them and see the animal that way if nothing else. If they start getting pushy about sending deposit then be leery. I’m not saying never pay a deposit, I require them, but don’t pay anything until you know are dealing with a legit farm. I hate scammers with a passion. I report them to group admins and facebook all the time. I hate to see people taken advantage of and have their joy stolen by people that just want a quick buck. I work real hard at being ethical with my farm business and at the venue. I want people who do business with me to feel like they got their money’s worth and a quality product. It just flies all over me that people make a living by taking advantage of others. Take steps to protect yourself and watch out for the 💩 that want to steal your money and your joy.

10/15/2026

Here is the video of the costume photo shoot such as it is lol. Toddy had yanked the capes around trying to get them off.

Well we tried. No one was very cooperative lol. We should have fed first to distract the mommas. They were trying to und...
10/15/2026

Well we tried. No one was very cooperative lol. We should have fed first to distract the mommas. They were trying to undress the babies, especially Toddy. It was an uphill battle but we managed to get a couple of shots. We were going to do a video of them running around but that went south in a hurry 🤣

I’m going to talk about something a little different today. The goat “business”. First let me dispel the myth that you m...
10/15/2026

I’m going to talk about something a little different today. The goat “business”. First let me dispel the myth that you make a lot of money with goats. That is a big nope lol! Some of the goat land clearing operations and huge commercial farms may pull a profit but don’t buy goats thinking you are going to make a lot of money. They can make for a good tax write off and that is what I am going to talk about today. Disclaimer: I am NOT a tax advisor and I highly recommend working with a tax professional if you decide to file a schedule F. I’m going to share some tips to help you maximize your write off without getting tagged as a hobby. Hopefully I won’t get audited for my efforts lol.

We don’t file a separate return for the farm. We use the schedule F to claim farm profit or loss on our 1040. You must claim all income but you do not have to claim all expenses. I never show a huge loss as far as what I sold and what I spent. The safe way to show loss is through mortgage interest and depreciation. The IRS doesn’t ding you for those those things when they look at your track record for profit or loss. You can show a loss for 4 years and then on the 5th year you show a small profit except for depreciation or mortgage interest and you won’t get dinged for being a hobby instead of a business. “How do I show a profit?” Simple don’t claim all of your expenses. Again, you MUST show all income but you do not have to deduct all expenses. I don’t depreciate my animals because it gets too muddy for me but you can. You can depreciate your buildings, fences, equipment including tractors and other vehicles used for farm use like ATVs, trailers, implements for the tractor, and so on. With new tax laws you can opt to take the expense off in one year instead of depreciating but unless you are trying to shelter a $100,000 profit it is better to set it up on a 5/7 year depreciation. Different items depreciate at different rates. We usually buy something big for the farm every year or so but for sure when something ages out of depreciation we add something else. Based on just income and costs I can show a profit and still have $10,000- $20,000 loss for the year from mortgage interest and depreciation. Again, I would not recommend trying to navigate this on Turbo tax. Set down with a tax professional especially if you are just starting this process. If you are going to file a schedule F go ahead and apply for a farm tax exemption with your state. Different states require you to file a schedule F for different amounts of time before you can do this so check your state for requirements.

For those that have never done it because you don’t want to keep up with receipts and such. There are apps that allow you to scan receipts and put them in categories. I don’t mess with that though. I can get a print out from the feed store, the vet, and see my transaction history from ADGA at the end of the year. For me that is more than enough to show a loss lol. If I needed more I could just go to my Amazon history.

If you have more questions please don’t ask me. Ask a professional. Even a fat tax refund won’t make up for the losses but it does give you a nice chunk of change in the spring to buy more goats 🤪

When I was in high school I played volleyball. I was tall, I was quick, and I could jump. I was a good passer. I was bes...
10/14/2026

When I was in high school I played volleyball. I was tall, I was quick, and I could jump. I was a good passer. I was best at the net. Blocking and spiking was what I lived for. What I couldn’t do was serve. I had the upper body strength to do an overhand serve but I couldn’t get the timing right for anything. Into the net or out the back of the court were my only options it would seem. I tried so hard to get it right. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t. During my sophomore year I had finally had enough and decided to serve it PE style (underhanded). I had a way of sending it barely over the net with a spin. I was embarrassed to be serving underhanded until I realized that the other team didn’t know what to do with it. I had several games that I served the whole game and they never scored. They were seduced by a slow ball only for it to spin off their arms in the wrong direction or girls would watch it fall between them because they had too much time to think about it. My favorite was when they thought it was going to hit the net but at the last minute it lifted over it finding everyone flat footed. My senior year I was leading scorer on serve with my ridiculously slow serve. My coach had long since stopped harping at me about serving overhand. I had found my own way and lo and behold it was successful. I tell that story to say this, YOU DO YOU! I saw a post in a group yesterday where a relatively new breeder was throwing in the towel. She had tried to do all the things that are “required” to be a successful breeder. She had spent tons of money on AI, showing, LA, milk testing. She had wore herself out and made it a job instead of a passion. If you want to breed goats you don’t have to do all the things. Do what makes you happy. Yes, always breed conformationally correct goats, breed them for their purpose and the traits that support that purpose but don’t get sucked in to the mentality that you have to do this or that and never the other to be doing it “right”. I don’t show, I don’t milk test or do LA because my schedule doesn’t allow me to keep my girls in milk in a way that is fair to them. That doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in it. It just means I am realistic in what I can do. I admire the ladies and guys that put in the work to do those things. What I do not admire are the people that insinuate that if you care about eye color or coat color that you are not a real breeder. The goal of any breeder is to leave the breed better than you found it. If you can do that and add spice to the outside package do it and don’t let anyone make you feel smaller for asking if the goat you want to buy has blue eyes. Not everyone is looking to spend $1200 for a show goat so capture as much of the market as you can. Have the extras in your herd like blue eyes, moon spots and flashy colors, as long as a conformationally correct goat is under all that. Don’t let the opinions of others steal your joy. Do what makes you happy and do it your way. As long as you are breeding correct and productive goats and not putting bad genetics in the breeding pool then you are doing it the “right” way. Enjoy your goats your own way. For me a successful year is having healthy babies that could go to a show home or a homestead for milk and be an asset. A year where all my babies find good homes from my farm to theirs. A year where I throw away more unused meds than I used. A year where my customers are already watching for the next batch of babies. A year where my girls and their babies are healthy and happy. My success is measured by me and me alone. I hate seeing people loose their passion because they were told what success means without defining that for themselves. Ok off my soap box now. Carry on and enjoy your goats.

Address

Lexington, TN

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Law Bottom Miniatures posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share