Wholesome Hill is our farm and our lifestyle choice. We believe in stewardship. We believe that people benefit from good stewardship as well as that livestock benefits from good stewardship.

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Our goals are about producing a quality goat, a goat who fulfills its purpose. There are different goats for different purposes. Our main focus here is quality breeding stock that is show correct. But equally important is a goat that can truly produce. We label these types for clarity to our customer base: show stock versus production stock. At this time all of our show stock lineup also has apt production capability in the line.

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We maintain a completely clean tested herd. All adult animals here are tested free of "the big 4".  This means we test for CAE, CL, Johne's, and Q Fever annually and have a protocol we follow that includes quarantine until incoming animals are worm free with clean biosecurity tests of ALL newly arriving animals.

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We have 4 types of goats here:

Show Type - these are bred for the shape, conformity, and correctness that is required to show in ABGA shows

Production Type - these are bred for high fertility, easy kidding, quality mothering, and weight maintaining

White Mafia/WH257 - these are bred for size, kidding ease, productivity, temperament, type and yes, white coloration, all of these can trace their blood back to Skittles herself

Nubian - these are dairy does with superior milking AND size. All test double high casein genetically with the end goal to build a Nubian base who are double high casein, have horns as Boer herds have (curved back, properly spaced, and not a risk in the herd) or are polled. Our Nubian herd is in the most exciting growth cycle there is at Wholesome Hill. This year we will begin to add exciting new traits to them - stay tuned!

 

Our “show type" is a fairly small group. These are the animals that are likely to produce show competitive offspring or are show competitive themselves.  We cull from this group excruciatingly hard; show correct is only the beginning. We also select for a temperament that means "easy to train to the show ring". These animals range in the investment required to create them, because much more than just show correctness, size, and temperament influence their value. Amongst this group, pedigree, also plays a role - though our end goal is never ever "pedigree containing names".  All of our bucks are show correct and selected for a specific trait set.

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The heaviest working group here are the Production Does. On some farms these are unregistered animals but here ours aren't defined by registration status, some are percentages and some are fullbloods - this includes our surrogate mother group because these animals have proven themselves to be superior producers. They are selected for a handful of traits that take priority over show traits: kidding ability, mothering ability, parasite resistance, overall health, hoof growth and personality are the most important factors. Why does personality matter in a goat that is not a show goat? Because its easier to deal with goats who are docile and easy to handle. Exciting changes are coming for this group in 2024 - we will be publicly releasing our Scale System used to evaluate these animals.

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The "White Mafia" fullbloods are white boer that contain no Savanna or Saanen - as of 2024 we will be designating this in their registration so they can easily be picked out on registration records. Skittles was the originating white fullblood here, we purchased her and have branched down out of her into different branches, some are unrelated enough to now breed to each other. They are scrutinized and selected for size, mothering, size, and carrying the white genetically. This means we are sometimes slower to register these goats and not all Skittles descendants get the label.

 

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