When Raising Goats, Don't...

I may not know anything about horses, even though I live in a town packed full of them (there are more horses than people sometimes!) I may not know anything about cows. You can’t ask me about donkeys and expect me to know anything but how to draw them. But if there is one thing I know about, it is goats.

The first time we got goats we only got two - a momma and a baby (though they weren’t related). The momma hated us, the baby was the most skittish thing you ever did see! To bottle feed this thing you had to run around the pen for twenty minutes to catch it! The whole time it was screaming bloody murder! “MAAAAAAA!!!! MAAAAAAA!” ‘Ma’ is what baby goats say, unless you get an odd ball, and then it might just say anything. But this baby goat was mine, my first pet. I loved it dearly and it was going to love me, if it was the last thing it did! I named it Snowflake because it was white-ish (at first, anyway.)

The momma goat we had gotten because it had milk. Well, if that is what you’d call half a cup a day. We spent more time chasing her and trying to get the milk out of her than you can shake a stick at! (I wonder why they say ‘shake a stick at’?)

Eventually, we got rid of the momma because she hated us so much. We got a different goat to take her place. We got (or did we make it?) a stanchion. The second goat did better than the first but I’m tell you, unless you’ve got the best milk goat in the world you will not get enough milk out of it to keep you supplied.

We eventually got more and more goats and started breeding out own. Snowflake, who finally liked me, we found was our best mother ever. She always had two (as far as I remember). I’m going to tell you right now, if anyone has EVER told you goats aren’t cute, you’ve been lied to! As soon as they get cleaned off they have the softest fur and the cutest little cries. They’ll sit in your lap (if you are very careful not to scare them) and sleep. Their moms, if they like you, might even try to clean you, too (I know this because one year Snowflake seemed sure I was one of her babies.)

But goats aren’t all cute little balls of fluff. One, you’ve got to clean up after them. Two, good luck keeping them in! Goats are smart and stupid all at the same time. You might say that they are smart at being stupid. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence and if they have a mind for it, they WILL get out! Over, under, through, around! They can even figure out how to open gates if they are simple enough. (Snowflake figured it out for one of our gates and that was a pain.)

We learned this the hard way. We spent an entire summer putting that fence up, six feet tall, all the way around the property! We let the goats out in it; they took one look and disappeared under the bottom! Bye, bye goats. There is no way to keep them in unless you put up electric fence. You can stake the fence to the ground, it won’t work, trust me. If you like you can tie drier sheets on the fence but they aren’t like deer so that won’t work either. You can try to be Heidi and herd them but they’ll get away from you, we tried that tactic too. Eventually, we said, “Enough is enough,” and up went the electric fence. My dad turned it on and we released the goats. You won’t believe how it happened. All the goats were lined up to go under the fence, just like always, so they were all touching, and when the first went to go under, she was shocked and the one behind her was shocked, and the whole line got shocked! My dad was grinning ear to ear, happy as a bear with honey.

We eventually got to be really good with goats. We learned that they prefer to have babies in the middle of the night during snowfall. And guess what else? Goats won’t eat anything! After watching all that TV, you’d figure they would, but trust me, they don’t. They are picky when it comes to their food. Sure, a baby might eat you clothing or your hair (I’m going to save the hair story for a different time, but you will enjoy it) but they won’t eat cans or even naw on buckets like dogs do!

We learned that you should never, ever as long as you live chase a goat and expect to get anywhere (unless you have fainting goats, yes there is such a thing!) If you want to catch a goat, you’ll need to walk up very slowly and talk to it. I know it may sound silly but it is the only thing that’ll work. If the goat don’t know you, when you get a couple feet away, kneeling and holding out your hand helps. No, it will not come to you to lick your hand. It probably won’t even look at you. Goats don’t act like dog in most cases (but we did have two that did, but I’ll tell you about that a different time). But if you do this you can usually carefully move over to it and pet it (or hook on its rope, which is usually the case).

I hope you all enjoyed!

Mandy