Welcome to Vita-Vierre Farm’s website in progress.

My husband and I raise registered Nubian goats and a variety of heritage fowl on 20 acres of upland shortgrass prairie in the far western Nebraska panhandle.

We keep a relatively natural management style with our animals. Our goats are pastured for much of the year with supplemental hay or grain only as necessary to maintain reasonable condition. We feel our goats are healthiest and their milk is perhaps healthiest for us when maintained on a high roughage / low concentrate diet.

Nearly all of our kids are dam-raised, and nearly all of our does are excellent mothers. After 20+ years of breeding CAE negative goats, we don’t feel a need to hand raise kids for disease prevention. Our dam raised kids seem to be especially healthy, robust and well adjusted. We do handle our young kids frequently as we don’t relish dealing with wild stock, and check does udders frequently to prevent over-filling issues. Kids are separated from their dams at night when we are needing milk. This practice keeps our milk supply and our milking schedule somewhat flexible.

We take disease prevention very seriously and choose to keep our herd as isolated as is practical to minimize risk of introducing pathogens. We test all new acquisitions and do random testing for CAE, CL, and Johnees. We have never had a positive. Our breeding bucks test normal for G6S; they do not carry this recessive gene, so their offspring will never be affected with the malady. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you would like detailed health histories or to arrange testing before finalizing a purchase.

Though we have appreciation for Nubian beauty, our highest breeding priorities lie with function. We do our best to breed goats that are healthy, productive, easily managed and generally a joy to own. For our management we need good legs and feet and high udders so our goats can roam the property into old age without undue injury risk; we also breed for pleasant temperament, low incidence of kidding problems, sensible mothering, easy hand milking, and of course mild sweet tasting milk available throughout the year.

We favor long level milk production, though this is challenging due to our day length and weather extremes, unheated shelter and water, and the inherent variations in nutrition that come with pasture and local hay as primary sources of feed. Our original line goats usually have extended lactations, which is not of importance to all dairy goat owners but has been convenient enough for us to become a priority. Though milk production drops in the fall and winter months, the percentage of butterfat and protein remain comparatively steady; great milk for hearty cold weather cooking, yogurt or cheese. Extended lactation does maintain their weight well with comparatively little feed and can tolerate some inconsistency in milking schedules (we milk once a day come fall, though this is not reflected in our milk records), so we find it easy to keep a milk supply year round. We also like the flexibility to breed when we want kids rather than when we want milk.

We have taken part in linear appraisal and DHIR milk testing and plan to again in the future to assure that there are records of our mature does production and attributes. These records should be available through the ADGA website.