a good kinda dairy goat?

[zzGypsy]

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I have a kinder in my flock, she's a nice goat. not as placid as my best lamanchas, but calmer than the flightiest pair.
still like the LaManchas better...

Lamanchas do get rather binary reactions though... no middle ground. love 'em or hate 'em. mostly folks who don't like them object to the "velcro goat" behavior... they're interested in your business, and in your business all the time, if you let them.

you had dumb ones? hm. we've had about 25 or 30 now and not a dumb one in the lot. some stubborn ones, one or two flighty ones, and one that will crawl under fences (but not climb over), but all of them smart. where are your lamanchas from (what region)? ours are california bred mostly, with some texas bloodlines.

I love the milk... my hubby drinks about a quart and a half of it a day... and we have made some outstanding cheese. opened our first aged dubliner cheddar this summer, really excellent!

definitely not a meat breed. got a friend who's breeding a massive boer buck to her lamanchas for the meat market... getting outstanding results - kids that grow much faster than the pure boers, and are much meatier than the slim lamancha kids.

guess it's like anything, people's opinons ... and milage ... may vary.

 

[Illia]

Our LaManchas came from a breeder right in Port Angeles, WA. I do think they're a special case though because the lady who we sold them to said she always had to keep an eye on them. And she had quite a few nice Nubians and a couple LaManchas, but none were like the girls we sold her.

We had two does and twin kids from one of them, the one with kids was actually pretty friendly and sweet at first, but when she had kids, she went kinda weird. The other girl, her twin sister, was a nutcase from the start. Not friendly, always climbing the fence or getting tangled in things, never actually responded to much, we couldn't halter-train her very well either, she couldn't even truly pay attention to us, you know, look us in the eye.


The thing is, the lady we got our Kinders from agreed about the milk issue though. I don't know why, but I thought the milk tasted awful, and the awful taste even got into the Kefir and Cheese. It was hardly creamy either.

One of our Kinder does' milk though was a gift from heaven. . . Incredibly fatty, yes. Incredibly creamy, sweet, and delicious - yes. The other Kinders were excellent too, but they didn't have as high of content as her.

 

[zzGypsy]

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I've found the LaMancha milk butterfat varies seasonally more than my kinder. in the first month or two, the butterfat in the Lamancha milk is so high that I have to change milk filters every quart because they clog up. at 18 months into lactation, it's what I would consider "normal" for whole milk. My kinder's milk is never as high fat at the beginning of lactation. I'll have to pay attention to how it is at the end of lactation. Because she's a lower producer than my Lamanchas, her milk just goes goes in with the others, and since she's at the end of the milking line, we don't usually see it separately, but it seems typical of what all are producing.

to the OP, any way you go, kinders and lamanchas are good goats to look at.