A few years ago when I was thinking about getting into the goat business, I saw some half-Boer/half-Nubian does that were some of the prettiest animals I had ever seen. When I moved back to the farm and went into a meat goat partnership with my cousin and neighbor, Joe Luther, I told him about these Boer-Nubian crosses I had seen. So on my encouragement, we went out and bought 16 fullblood, registered Nubian does - this was even before we went shopping for a Boer buck a few months later to cross with them.
 Now, I know a lot of folks love their Nubians, and what I am about to say does not apply to all operations - but while Nubians may always hold a special place in my heart, there's no longer a place for them on my farm. They were a disaster! They were the worst mothers I have ever seen. They would have babies and walk off and leave them to die - which they did. If the kids did survive, we had to work with mother and baby to get them to nurse. After our first kidding season, Joe and I decided this was too much work for the few kids we salvaged. Out of the 16 does we started with, we saved only two doe kids, which are expecting three-quarter kids any day now. Needless to say, with the investment we made in the Nubians, we were expecting a lot more Boer/Nubian does in our herd now. And to add to the agony, when we culled our Nubian does we received only $40 a head for our $150 animals!
 I used this long introduction to get to this point: Joe and I decided we needed a low maintenance animal with good mothering ability that could pretty much make it on her own if we were going to pursue the meat goat business. Joe and I are like most goat producers, we have other things that also occupy our time - the goats are SUPPOSED to be a part-time job. We didn't have the time nor the energy nor the desire to babysit these meat goats. (Boer breeding stock is a whole other story - I'll babysit and pamper them anytime!) But 80-cent meat goats shouldn't require full-time attention.
 Which brings me to my next point. While visiting in Texas, Joe and I discovered we could have our low-maintenance meat goat. We were visiting Frank and Mary Dyson of Robinson, Texas, to do a story on their Kiko operation. We had heard about Kikos, and I had run several articles on the New Zealand goat, but we had never seen a lot of the goats up close until we went to the Dysons.
 And it just so happened that Frank had several yearling sons from his famous herd sire, Moneymaker, for sale at the time of our visit. Joe and I picked out a nice 200-pound, year-old buck. A few weeks later we had him shipped to Mississippi and named him King Tut (following our pharoah theme here on Egypt Creek Ranch).
 But once we got him home, we weren't sure what to do next. We decided to buy 30 Southern-acclimated solid black Spanish nannies from R&D Ranch in Georgia and turn them in with Tut. This was in July, middle of the summer, but we couldn't wait to start producing Kiko/Spanish crosses - or what we began referring to as the Mississippi Improved Brush Goat.
 According to our calculations, we should begin having kids the first week of December. Well, Christmas came and went - no kids. New Year's came - no kids. Joe and I put Tut up in a pen to fatten him up before selling him for meat - apparently he wasn't going to produce us our anticipated Kiko/Spanish kids.
 But fortunately we didn't act in haste, because in late February, white, red and tan kids started dropping every where. Apparently, the Spanish does did not cycle until they got good and ready, in late September. But when they went into heat, Tut must have been waiting - 30 kids were born in less than two weeks. But here's the good part: three months later, 29 of those 30 kids are still living and thriving - including one little buck kid whose Spanish mother wouldn't take him. But that didn't deter him - he went from new momma to new momma stealing colostrum for the first day of his life - until we found him and grafted him to a half-Boer nanny that had lost her kid.
 But that was typical of all the kids. We did not have one single weak kid. With the half-Boer kids the previous year, I always brought a syringe loaded with Nutri-Drench to perk up the new kids. With the half-Kiko kids, I couldn't even catch them, so I figured they didn't need a boost!
 Since the kids were born in February, we have touched them only once - to worm and ear-tag them when they were 30 days old. And I can testify: put into a pasture situation, the half-Kikos are outgrowing the half-Boers born at the same time. We'll be watching to see how the animals put on weight as the summer progresses - but we'll have to watch the Kikos from a distance, they're still a little wild!