About
Cedar Shade Farm
Our Goats
At Cedar Shade Farm we maintain a small herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats as breeding stock for the purpose of improving the Nigerian Dwarf breed according to the American Dairy Goat Association Standard. Our goal is to consistently produce competitive Nigerian Dwarfs in the milk pail and show ring with longevity as dairy animals. We also keep a variety of large fowl and bantam chicken breeds for egg production and exhibition. Our bantams are bred to the American Bantam Association Standard of Perfection.
We got our first goats, two kinders, in 2015 as home milkers and 4-H projects. As we got more competitive in 4-H, we opted to purchase our first purebred ADGA registered Nigerian Dwarf - EOTL B Shady Grace - to start our breeding program. We slowly built our herd and, in the fall of 2020, attended our first ADGA sanctioned show. We were hooked!
Since then, we have continued to improve our stock by adding in bucks and doelings from competitive, quality breeders from the East coast, and have attended as many ADGA shows as we could. In 2022, we became an ADGA plus herd, put the entire doe herd on milk test and had our first linear appraisal session. After learning and seeing the importance of the data learned from LA and milk test, we have kept our ADGA Plus membership and will be doing milk test and signing up for LA annually. As of yet, we feel we have all the 'pieces' we should need to continue to breed up and improve our herd, with the exception of a buck or two a few years down the line.
We have been so thankful for all the friends and mentors we have made and learned from since we started our goat journey and hope to build that same relationship with those who buy from us!
Our first Nigerian Dwarf - EOTL B Shady Grace
Lucy - Our first Goat (Kinder)
Our Poultry
We got our first flock of chickens as egg producers and pets roughly 10 years ago, learning as we went about care and management for their sake, but had no intention of actually breeding and selling birds. In 2016, we became members of the 4-H poultry project in our county's 4-H program, and seeing as your typical hatchery-type, free-ranging, Rhode Island Red would not make a good show bird, in 2018, we started looking into other breeds. This is where we met our first chicken love - the Mille Fleur (bantam) D'Uccle! We started with four hens (who still remain here to this day) who were trained as excellent showmanship birds. But again, we had no intention of breeding.
Until...in 2020, when a friend asked if we would take her breeding trios of Silkies and D'Uccles, we couldn't resist! But we wanted to do it right. This became the start of our poultry breeding program. Since then, we have continued to add more breeds, all of which are bred to the American Poultry Association and/or the American Bantam Association standards of perfection to improve and conserve the genetics of our breeds.
Finn - Our original Mille Fleur D'uccle breeder cock bird who still resides here taking good care of his ladies!
YouTube
As we learned more about our chickens as far as breed standards and genetics, I especially fell in love with the science of genetics. Studying genes, genomes and making Punnet squares became a hobby of mine! Although our YouTube channel was first started to teach others about care and management, which we still do, it has taken a shift with the majority of the content explaining genetics. I really didn't think there would be too much of an interest in this sort of content, I mainly wanted to do it because making and sharing a video was so much easier than typing entire paragraphs in the comment section on a post in a Facebook group.
But, on April 22nd, 2023, we hit out 1000th subscriber and couldn't be more thankful!
Although most of the information is on chickens, I have touched slightly on goat genetics and definitely plan to expand into goat color genetics (to prevent DNA issues) in the future! We try to upload videos once a month when time allows with the rest of our farm. We love working with our goats and chickens and sharing what we've learned with other breeders and enthusiasts! For any questions or concerns, please see our 'Contact' page, and to learn more about chicken genetics, see our channel here
