Stormfly joined our herd May 13, 2020.

A few days prior to her purchase, we found a calf in the pasture who's mother wasn't caring for him. We have raised every bottle calf we've had on powdered milk replacer, but I decided it was time to look for another option. After searching for a few days with no luck, I remembered that my sister-in-law had listed Stormfly a few weeks prior. I made a quick call to see if she was still available and it was our lucky day! We hooked up the trailer, headed out and brought her back home. My sister-in-law had weaned her kid and was still hand milking her, so it worked out perfectly for us!

I had never seen or heard of LaMancha's prior to her, but she has been an absolute pleasure to own. She has the greatest personality, loves attention and is perfect on the milking stand. She was patient as we learned our routine and seemed to be happy with her new home. We spent our "coronication" milking her twice a day. My 12 year old and 6 year old could milk her out just as quickly as I could by the end of the summer!

Stormfly successfully raised the calf we found in the pasture. Pickles was our first calf raised on goat milk. He thrived from day one and we didn't have any issues with him scouring or dehydrating. As we were getting ready to wean him, we got a call about another calf that needed us. Duke came to us in much worse shape. I really didn't think he would make it. Day by day, I questioned if we were making any progress. We fought a fever, an unwillingness to stand, and no appetite for the first week. If he tried to take the bottle, he'd suck for a few seconds and then drop his head down. We drenched 95% of his nutrition that first week. By week 2, I started to feel like he might just make it. It was almost a day and night situation with him. We went out one morning to offer a bottle and he latched on like he was a pro. From that day on, he kept going strong!

After weaning the second calf, we decided it was time to dry Stormfly up and breed her. Since LaMancha's are not popular in our area, we used a Spanish buck so that we'd be back in milk by the Summer of 2021. She kidded for her 3rd freshening April 6th with twin bucks. I'm excited to see what her milk production is this coming year! I did purchase an ADGA LaMancha buck though and hope to get a few doelings out of her in the future to grow our milking herd.