Curbstone Valley Chanterelle 3*M 5*D AR 3169

Our 2016 kidding season was rather disappointingly buck heavy, the complete antithesis of last season. After a run through mid-kidding season of buckling after buckling, Neve was in the kidding stall, and I wasn’t holding out much hope for a doeling to retain from her. Sure enough, the first kid was indeed a big buckling, but then Neve produced this beautiful, feminine, little doeling.

As her dam has a snow/ice/meteorological names theme, we’ve elected to name Neve’s offspring after named Glaciers, and the Chanterelle Glacier is located in Canada’s Pacific Range.

Chanterelle, or just Ella to her friends, is so far everything we expected from this cross. Standing naturally uphill, this doe is long, elegant, with straight front and rear straight legs, with a high and wide escutcheon, open ribbing, and levelness of topline. Three of four of Ella’s grandparents are the same as the 2015 National Champion, CH Castle Rock Flash Flood, not to say that’s any guarantee of anything, genetically speaking, but it’s certainly not a bad start, albeit those are mighty big hooves to fill.

Regardless, pedigrees aside, Ella is a lovely doe, and as a junior placed 1st in her class at a number of shows, although as an April kid, lacked the maturity to compete with the senior kids for the big ribbons that year.

Ella unfortunately had a tough kidding at the start of her second freshening, with an enormous single buck. As such her production and capacity was not what we expected to see. Even her appraiser lamented that everything was there, he just wished there was more of it. It happens, hence the adage ‘there’s alway next year’. The good news is Ella is confirmed bred for spring of 2020, with at least quadruplets, so we are very eager to see how this season is for her. Chanterelle is a lovely correct doe, but with a single she ended up carrying some excess weight, and her dairyness scores suffered accordingly, so 2020 should prove to be a much better year.