UPHOFF BOER GOATS

Uphoff Boer Goats began in 1998 when we saw the meat goat market developing at Lexington, NE. Our first buck, the only one we could find   within a 100 mile radius of Lexington was "Andy" a black and white paint 1/2 Boer, 1/2 LaMancha. We still have one of his daughters, Little Red. After Andy came Hank, our first fullblood registered buck purchased from Donald and Rita Johnston of Grover, CO.

We now keep from 4 to 6 fullblood bucks and use them in our breeding program and lease some of them to other breeders to improve their herds. We offer registerable  fullblood and percentage nannies, commercial nannies and dairy nannies to breeders who have goats and to those just starting in the goat business. We pride ourselves in our post-sale support of new and existing breeders, keeping them abreast of new developments in the meat goat industry through our e-group of about 300 meat goat producers in Nebraska & surrounding states,  and helping them through health problems that occur from time to time. We tell our customers, "When you buy our goats, you also buy us".

Our bucks include: Texas Warrior purchased from Coni Ross of Blanco, TX, a son of the Ennobled Coni Warrior;  Little Tex, a red & white paint son of Texas Warrior, out of Texas Bernadette, a daughter of Troy Powell’s Kalahari; A new buck we will be using in our breeding program and in our lease program this year (2011) is Uphoff’s Jethro, a red and white paint son of  Dunroamin Cayenne that is out of a red daughter of Fudge, Uphoff’s Georgia.  In the summer/fall of 2011 we added a fullblood Savanna buck to our program, Zeus, purchased at the 4S Goat Expo from George & Suzanne England of Midland, SD.  This new addition will be used primarily on our Boer/Nubian nannies to create  3 way composite billy goats for our commercial customers.  In the fall of 2011 we lost one of our  favorite nannies, Uphoff's Countess Dracula.  She was the mother of Uphoff's Elmer Fudge and several other notable offspring, grand offspring and great grand offspring.

Our fullblood  and percentage nannies  are mostly of our own raising.

As we have matured along with the meat goat industry we have seen an increasing need for bucks that will go into commercial and registered herds and increase their weaning weights. So, we are concentrating our efforts in producing this type of buck for our customers. We produced the high indexing buck in the first ever Nebraska Range Buck Test held May through October of 2009. He was a son of Easter Egg.

You will notice that we list each goat's weaning weight in it's description on our For Sale  page. One of our goals is to wean some 100 pound billy kids at 90 days of age and nanny kids at 90 pounds at 120 days.

One of our main goals that has evolved from our participation in the various buck tests and listening to the comments and requests of our customers,  is to raise the weaning weights of our customers’ kids just 10# per head.  If we can accomplish this,  and he breeds the buck he buys from us to just 30 of his nannies each year & weans a 170% kid crop & sells the kids in the traditionally high fall/Christmas market for $2.00 per pound, that will result in an Extra 510# of kids he’ll market for an EXTRA PROFIT of over $1,000 from each crop of kids through the use of Uphoff’s genetics.  One of our repeat customers told us this summer (2011) that, “I used to wean 30# kids until I switched to your genetics.  Now I’m weaning 60# kids”.   Another lady told us, "I can walk through my goats and pick out the ones sired by your bucks.  They are  several pounds heavier than the other bucks' kids."  That in a nutshell is our goal in the meat goat business.  It doesn’t matter how pretty a billy goats ancestors were or how many times they were shown on the end of a lead rope; it’s the amount of profit he makes for his owner.  And we also  feel that  a lot of the responsibility of more pounds at weaning lies on the nannies used in a breeding program so we have enrolled our herd in Dr Andries' Production Testing  at Kentucky State University at Frankfort, KY.  We send him the birthweights and weaning weights of our kids and the weights of the nannies at weaning along with some other pertinent information and he sends us back all the figures we need to evaluate our breeding program.  We highly recommend this program to all our serious meat goat producers whether they have "2 nannies and a Victory Garden" or a thousand nannies.

The meat goat industry is the fastest growing and one of the most profitable of all agricultural entities. One of the most quotable quotes we've heard about this segment of agriculture came from a County Extension Educator who said, "When you add meat goats to your operation you don't have to take anything else away. If you're raising corn and decide to start raising soybeans you have to raise less corn, but, if you add meat goats you don't have to take anything else out." Meat goats can be a great project for a stay at home mom or youngsters in a family. Many commercial goat operations have grown into a very profitable entity from a few goats that were purchased for 4H projects for the children in the family.   So the future remains bright for serious meat goat breeders.

At Uphoff's we want to help our present and future customers increase their profits through the purchase of our breeding bucks and does. To assist our customers to gain their goals in the meat goat industry we provide support in the management area of their goats. We thank you for visiting our web site and hope we can be of service to you sometime soon.

Here is the article published in the August 2011 issue of the Goat Rancher magazine in Dr. Frank Pinkerton's Quesion & Answer column.  Frank will be one of the featured speakers at the 2011 4S Goat Expo in Lexington, NE on October 1 along with Dr Ken Andries from Kentucky State University at Frankfort, KY:

Goat Rancher Aug '11 issue, The Goat Man Q/A column

August ’11 Q/A Column

As readers of the Rancher know, I have long been a proponent of on-farm performance testing programs. The Rancher has carried articles by Dr. Richard Browning of TN SU, Dr. Ken Andries of KY SU, and me on the theory and practice of such evaluation schemes; they are also in my book. Ken recently sent me a copy of an email he had received from Mel and Doris Uphoff of Elwood, NE containing commentary about recent industry developments, observations on his use of performance-testing programs, and, not least, intriguing pictures, with associated performance data, of a top doe and a buck kid appropriately named Krypton. With permission from Mel and Ken, I now paraphrase the email for you; I add occasional comment for clarification or emphasis.

It’s interesting how the Boer meat goat business is changing and maturing. Formerly, we would get mostly general questions from repeat and prospective customers concerning our website and purebreds for sale. Lately, however, folks want to know not how pretty a buck and who its ancestors were, but rather how did the prospect perform? (FP: hallelujah!). They ask for birth weight, weaning weight, and average daily gain of the kid—and also that of his sire. Oddly enough, I have sold some high-performing crossbreds for equal or better money than certain of the purebreds that do not do as well performance-wise (FP: hallelujah again).

And even more astounding, they want to know how many pounds of kids the dam weaned this year—and, if possible, last year!! (FP: the doe’s adjusted litter weaning weight divided by the doe’s body weight at weaning time is the ultimate evaluation of doe efficiency. If she is weaning a litter weight equal, or more, to her body weight at weaning time, hardly anything else matters… certainly not irrelevancies like color, color pattern, anal/ear hair color, hoof color, facial characteristics, horn shape/set, whatever—in the end, these concerns are all in the bone and skin barrels; believe it).

It used to be that prospective buyers were impressed with statements like: this buck has many Ennoblements in his pedigree; but, apparently, this is of lessening importance to them anymore. Nowadays, buyers want (need) to show some black type in their bottom lines; accordingly, they are concerned primarily with four factors: a) a doe that breeds regularly, kids unassisted, and ‘mothers’ well; b) a doe that produces an adjusted litter weaning weight of near 100% of her weight at weaning; c) birth and adjusted weaning weights of sire of sales prospects; and d) average daily gain of service-sire to weaning plus weight at 8-9 months of age.

Many of my customers for breeding stock and for my feed customers (I’m a dealer for Nutrition Services Goat Feed) are moving from winter to spring kidding to lower doe production expense and to program kids for late fall/winter marketing with concomitant higher prices/lb. This seasonal change lowers costs, birth to weaning, and also reduces post-weaning costs via maximum use of forages rather than grain supplements.

(FP: it is the feed cost/lb of gain, not the daily rate of gain, which really determines the crucial accounting figure, income- over-feed-cost, which, in turn, largely determines profit per-doe and, collectively, enterprise profits. Net returns are key, not gross income. Those not believing—and practicing this economic maxim will, sooner than later, become dependent on off-farm income or worse, sustained spousal support; marital stress will follow apace; dissolution looms—all because you can’t, or won’t, follow the maxim).

We starting keeping production records a few years ago and last year we enrolled in Dr. Andries’ free performance-testing program. It has increased our ability to better identify/select keepers, breeding sale prospects, and slaughter animals. (FP: readers should know that Ken will be at the four-state Goat Expo in Lexington, NE on October 1-2, ’11 to speak to the attendees on this subject and on other aspects of goat breeding; I will doing things on marketing/meats).

FP: I    now call your attention to the accompanying photographs. The doe shown doing her maternal duty is sired by one of Mels’s purebred Boers and is out of a ¼ Boer ¾ Nubian doe. Her name is Darris and she is 5/8 Boer-3/8 Nubian.  One of her male offspring, Krypton, is shown in classical suckling stance, and also singly in the second picture. Krypton is the son of another Uphoff purebred Boer; thus, he is 13/16 Boer and 3/16 Nubian born April 14. Krypton weighed 10.5 lb at birth. Darris kidded on pasture, unassisted, thus confirming Mel’s reproductive policy: do it right, or leave right after.

On May 16, Krypton weighed 31.5 lb for an ADG of .66 (31.5 – 10.5/32 days). On June 17 he weighed 54.6 lb (ADG of .73 for the second 32 day period). From birth to 64 days his ADG was .69. He weighed 67 lb on July 18^th; thus he posted an ADG, birth to weaning of .59 lb.

Krypton’s littermate, Kent, also weighed10.5 lb at birth, but did not keep up with brother. On July 18^th, he posted an ADG, birth to weaning of .51 lbs—good, but 14% lower. These figures demonstrate, in part, the genetic variation within littermates and, in part their differential response to presumably the same growth environment. (Kent might have not have been as gluttonous, or he may not have been as efficient converter as Krpton, or he may have had an unseen bug-problem or other malaise; as a result, his performance was 86% of Krypton’s and, in a late picture, he also demonstrates lesser live grade.

Krypton will be for sale shortly after his weaning date; interested buyers should inquire early. (Personally, I would prefer this animal over an equally ‘pretty”, but untested animal, no matter the appeal of the latter’s paper qualifications). Packers buy reality, not promise; you should too.

From the photo, I estimate that this commercial sire prospect, Krypton, has a slaughter grade of at least 1.5; he is really wide through the front end, and is wide along the backline. He has prominent muscling in the high-value rump-sirloin-short loin area and good width between the thurls. Though I cannot tell from the picture, and even though the depth of lower leg appears quite adequate, he could lack some in width of rear legs. Readers should note that Darris is part Nubian and demonstrates the genetic thinness of rear leg common to dairy breeds (more pronounced in Togg, Alpine and Saanen than Nubian). But do also note her stout front-end and strong backline (both of which are obviously reflected in Krypton’s conformation).. ..e

And, now, the clincher… Mater Darris posted an adjusted litter weaning weight in 2010 of 155.8 lb of kids and, not surprisingly, was the highest indexing doe in the Uphoff herd of 29 Boer purebreds and 60 or so Boer/Nubian crosses. She produced 1.15 times (115% of) her weaning weight of 135.4 lb. How many do you have of such blessings?

In mid July ’11, Darris’ (unadjusted) litter weaning weight was 126 lb and she weighed 128.6 lbs. Her 2011 ranking (index) will not be known until the records of all her herd mates for to Andries for analysis later this year. However, my thought is that Krypton and his littermate will again put her at, or near, the top of the herd. Her unadjusted figure is 98%...126/128.6).

Caveat, readers: the Uphoffs run their entire herd on 11.5 acres. This grazing constraint necessitates the feeding of purchased hay ad lib plus an average of 1 lb/day/doe of 16% CP concentrate as gestation and lactation needs require. The kids are hand-fed the same concentrates and are limited to not more than an average of 1 lb/day/head in small groups. (One imagines, correctly, that Krypton, being unexposed to early childhood social equity training, was not into sharing equitably with Kent or his cohorts).

Readers should also understand that this particular feeding program does not compromise the performance data because all animals were treated alike, Darris et fils rose to the top in this prevailing management environment because they were genetically superior. This is the ultimate expression of proper selection procedure. Remember, unequal environmental treatment of goats within herds renders findings from even performance-tested animals of little genetic value. Don’t waste time and effort going there.