At the Rafter O, we strive to breed for exceptional Mini Nubian traits.  Nubian characteristics, conformation, and MILK are our priorities.  The icing on the cake is polled, blue eyes, and unique colors.  Personality is also important – we want all of our goats to be super friendly…even the bucks in rut.

When we first decided to get into dairy goats, I immediately fell in love with Nubians.  Upon learning how BIG they get, I was ecstatic to learn about the smaller version, the Mini Nubian! We have infused more Nubian genetics into our herd to improve our Nubian characteristics.  How can one resist those long, floppy ears?

Conformation is also very important.  We are members of the Texas Mini Milkers and enjoy participating in Live and MDGA Virtual Shows.  We enjoy the competition and learning more about our goats and how to improve them!

The most crucial for any breed of dairy goat is MILK!  We like to have our does have capacity, nice teat size, large orifices, and a smooth foreudder.  Once you’ve milked a goat with tiny teats and orifices…you realize the importance of these characteristics!  We conduct One Day Milk Test through MDGA to obtain Milk Stars for our girls!

The icing on the cake is the traits such as Polled, blue-eyes, and flashy colors.  Our polled goats are heterozygous polled, meaning their kids can be either polled or horned.  Although disbudding is necessary for dairy goats, I find it comforting that most years, I only have to disbud about 50% of the kids.

Blue eyes versus Brown eyes—different strokes for different folks. I have blue eyes, and I like blue-eyed goats, but this doesn’t affect my decisions on the quality of the goat. You can’t milk eyes (or ears, for that matter!). We know that our future Rafter O homes have certain preferences, so we try to breed for a variety of traits that buyers want to add to their herd.

In regards to color, we are proud of our Cou Clair doe line, which stems from Nomad Once in a Blue Moon “Clair.” Clair gave us a two-tone chamoisee doeling, Clover. In Spring 2021, Clover gave us a Cou Clair blue-eyed polled doeling, Verbena. Clover and Verbena keep the color pattern going in the Rafter O herd. The Cou Clair color pattern is rare in Nubians, as it is traditionally an Alpine color.

The Rafter O has the exceptional traits that you are looking for: milk, conformation, polled, blue eyes, and rare and flashy colors!