Why we love No. 4 and will never sell her

By Belinda Hankins
Reprinted from Goat Rancher, May 2008

    She was just a little thing, the runt out of three new babies. I guess I felt sorry for her, so I started bringing a baby bottle to the pasture with me when I went to visit. She quickly learned that she could get a free meal if she came up and nuzzled me.
    I don’t remember why we didn’t name our goats back then. We just gave them numbers. Our first purebreds were born in the year 2000, which used the tattoo letter M. So we named our first goat M1, the second one M2, etc. My special goat was M4, and we have always called her “No. 4” — with a lot of affection. Eight years later, she still thinks she’s my bottle baby.
    No. 4 was never the biggest goat, but she is one the biggest producers and best mommas we have ever had.
    Her sire was Goldmine II and her mother was JTV Queen, who was still having kids at age 8. No. 4 turned 8-years-old this year, and she, too, is still producing. She had a buck and doe kid in April.
    As the demand for 100% New Zealand Kikos took off a few years ago, we were eager to reproduce all the great traits that we had found in No. 4.
    We flushed her in 2005 and froze the embryos. We flushed her again in 2006. From the fresh and frozen embryos, we kidded out 23 kids in 2007 that we registered with the American Kiko Goat Association. We flushed her in that awful heat in 2007 and had another nine embryo kids born this year. In addition, No. 4 has had five kids born naturally in the last three kiddings. That’s a total of 37 kids since 2006.
    We kept two of No. 4’s daughters last year and will keep more this year. Terry’s fussing because he want’s to sell them, but he knows I’m right (as usual). No. 4’s daughters are proving to be just as prolific, and sweet, as she is. That’s why No. 4 will always have a special place in our hearts and on our farm.