Our Herd
Our Kinder herd began in 2013 with a quest for ideal homestead breeds to supply a family's needs. We wanted to enjoy fresh milk and homemade cheeses here on our North Georgia homestead, but a dairy cow was a far larger animal than we wanted to deal with, sure to produce far more milk than we could use. We looked instead to goats and carefully researched breeds. There were many choices, but it was the dual-purpose Kinder that seemed the perfect fit.
The challenge with regard to these wonderful goats, in those days, was finding them readily on the East Coast. (Fortunately, that has changed.) The breed is young, relatively speaking, and it originated all the way across the continent in Washington state. We brought back our first Kinder does, Calypso, Sugar, and Kiwi, from Ohio and Missouri. A year later, we bought our first bucks, Rocket and Dazz, in Missouri, and arranged for our beautiful doe Fawn to come to us all the way from Washington. In 2015 we brought foundation stock back from fine herds in California (Still Meadow Kinders) and New Mexico (Serena Kinders) and, later, Massachusetts. Our herd since then has evolved as we've sought to improve our lines. In 2021 we brought home two doelings from Pricker Patch Farm in Wisconsin.
Once we had our first Kinders here on our homestead, we really fell for them. We are developing our own small resilient homestead, and we are interested in helping others to do the same. Because Kinders suit this purpose so well, we decided to establish a small breeding herd, the better to spread the word about them and to provide another regional source for registered Kinders. We aim for our herd to include lines from some of the best Kinder breeders across the country so that buyers in the Southeast can bring their first Kinders home without having to ship them across country or travel more than a few hours to find them. The Resources page includes links to information about other Kinder breeders in our region and across the country.
Our herd is tested for CL, CAE, and Johne's disease (testing done through WADDL, the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab).
On our small farm, we are interested in a whole systems design approach to raising crops and livestock, using principles of permaculture (in short, learning all we can from how nature works and imitating that, the better to create healthy, largely self-sustaining systems). We are redesigning our property, which is currently mostly pasture, the better to feed our goats a diet more natural to them than a grass pasture is. Goats prefer a a diversified food supply. They love herbs and "weeds" that supply much more dense nutrition than grass does, and they would eat about 60% of their diet as browse off bushes and trees if they had a choice. Yet there are some plants toxic to goats that we want to be sure our herd doesn't have access to. Our goal is to supply as much of the nutrition our goats need as we can right here on our property, using a series of paddocks for rotational grazing and browsing. We look forward to sharing what we are learning and what turns out to work.
Please contact us if you are interested in our Kinders.
Charley and Elizabeth Sweet
The challenge with regard to these wonderful goats, in those days, was finding them readily on the East Coast. (Fortunately, that has changed.) The breed is young, relatively speaking, and it originated all the way across the continent in Washington state. We brought back our first Kinder does, Calypso, Sugar, and Kiwi, from Ohio and Missouri. A year later, we bought our first bucks, Rocket and Dazz, in Missouri, and arranged for our beautiful doe Fawn to come to us all the way from Washington. In 2015 we brought foundation stock back from fine herds in California (Still Meadow Kinders) and New Mexico (Serena Kinders) and, later, Massachusetts. Our herd since then has evolved as we've sought to improve our lines. In 2021 we brought home two doelings from Pricker Patch Farm in Wisconsin.
Once we had our first Kinders here on our homestead, we really fell for them. We are developing our own small resilient homestead, and we are interested in helping others to do the same. Because Kinders suit this purpose so well, we decided to establish a small breeding herd, the better to spread the word about them and to provide another regional source for registered Kinders. We aim for our herd to include lines from some of the best Kinder breeders across the country so that buyers in the Southeast can bring their first Kinders home without having to ship them across country or travel more than a few hours to find them. The Resources page includes links to information about other Kinder breeders in our region and across the country.
Our herd is tested for CL, CAE, and Johne's disease (testing done through WADDL, the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab).
On our small farm, we are interested in a whole systems design approach to raising crops and livestock, using principles of permaculture (in short, learning all we can from how nature works and imitating that, the better to create healthy, largely self-sustaining systems). We are redesigning our property, which is currently mostly pasture, the better to feed our goats a diet more natural to them than a grass pasture is. Goats prefer a a diversified food supply. They love herbs and "weeds" that supply much more dense nutrition than grass does, and they would eat about 60% of their diet as browse off bushes and trees if they had a choice. Yet there are some plants toxic to goats that we want to be sure our herd doesn't have access to. Our goal is to supply as much of the nutrition our goats need as we can right here on our property, using a series of paddocks for rotational grazing and browsing. We look forward to sharing what we are learning and what turns out to work.
Please contact us if you are interested in our Kinders.
Charley and Elizabeth Sweet