The Caprine Classic

November 20, 2007

We decided to travel to Canada to attend the Caprine Classic. It was a great trip and we had a blast! We got lost on the way and also had some other setbacks so we missed a few of the first talks but that was okay.

When we finally got there we decided to walk around and look at all the goats. It was pretty neat to see all the different breeds in person. There were Nubians, Dairy goats, Boers (which were HUGE!) and Angoras. We also saw La Manchas and we decided that they were creepy looking like the Raptor dinosaurs on Jurassic Park so we decided not to spend to much time at their pens, just in case they decided to go on a devastating ATTACK! The Angoras were pretty dirty so that made us feel better because we were discovering that goats are near impossible to keep perfectly clean!

We were able to talk with a Cashmere goat breeder (she had over 80 goats!). She was able to give us some good advice on things like feeding, spinning the fiber and showed us some good samples about how the fiber should look. We also got some information from the pro-biotic booth and picked up some goat bottle nipples and a few gifts for our mom from a goat products supplier.

After we were done walking around and visiting the goats we decided to sit in on one of the talks. But after a two hour talk about the Ontario Dairy Goat Co-op, we decided to head back to the hotel.
The next morning we headed over early to go see the goat judging competition. There were a lot more goats there by then. We walked around a little bit more before we sat down and watched the judging. Judging was very neat. There were goats of all sizes shapes and colors being handled by people even more diverse. One of the goats was even led by a little girl who looked like she was about five. It was so cute watching her try to get this Dairy goat to do what she wanted it to!

We headed home inspired that afternoon. Most of the three hour long car ride home was spent discussing goats, goat breeding and possibly setting up a pygora category at a Michigan show, since pygoras are more popular out west. It was a great trip- we had a lot of fun and learned a lot.