Baby Goats!
Ever since we decided on starting our farm we knew that we wanted goats! We wanted milk and to be able to make cheeses, yoghurt and ice cream. Now cows work for that of course, however when my in-laws bought their home it had been a goat farm and so the barn was already kitted out with stalls of the right size for goats with built in hay mangers and everything. In order to decide what kind of goats we wanted we visited a few contacts that we had through friends and family to see their goats and their set ups and Nigerian Dwarf goats seemed right up our ally! Nigerian dwarfs despite their small stature produce a lot of milk and theirs has a very high butterfat content making it taste really creamy so it would work great for our cheese, yoghurt and baking plans. The dwarfs being small can be more easily picked up and put back in their pens after the inevitable escapes so that appealed too! It still took us a while to take the plunge because somehow goats just seemed like they would be much harder to look after than say chickens and ducks so we wanted to get our research done and make sure we had everything ready before we got them.
When we finally decided to go for it we contacted one of the family friend contacts who had so generously showed us her farm and let us try some of her homemade goat yoghurt and we reserved 2 doelings from when her does next gave birth. We then waited with increasing excitement, hoping that the mommas didn’t birth all male goats and were so happy that enough girls were born, enough that we could maybe get 3!! The next step was going for a goat walk! Wendy (our goat lady) takes her whole herd of goats out for a daily walk around her property and pasture, I had imagined leashes but was amazed to see how they all just followed along obediently with the baby goats taking their lead from the mommas! It was so cool to see 15(ish) dwarf goats all different sizes, colors and patterning streaming up and down the hills. As the babies were young we had to leave them behind to spend the next few months with their mothers as they needed all the goodness of the mother’s milk and also to learn what to eat and what not to eat when out in pasture. We went for a second goat walk to finally pick out which babies we would take and a date was set! The pressure was on to make sure the barn stall was ready, get the fencing, make them a field shelter, buy hay, feed etc etc ! I cut it somewhat fine only getting the hay the day before goat arrival date as many farms were having issues getting out to cut hay as there had been a lot of rain and some farms would only sell us 100 bales at a time! (we calculated how much hay we would need for 3 baby dwarf goats for the winter and came at a number less than half that so we didn’t want to risk getting too much that could potentially spoil and make our goats sick)
August 12th was goat day! I packed a dog crate in the car lined with a towel and some straw and drove up to get the babies! Wendy showed me how to trim their hooves and went over their feeding regime and I popped bright new collars on them; pink for Peanut, blue for Maple and green for Juniper. They were very noisy on the drive home and wow does a baby goat sound like a crying baby human! I carried them 1 by 1 from the crate to their stall in the barn and they screamed so loudly when they were separated from each other but finally they were all settled in. Every time I tried to leave the barn led to more yelling until they eventually quieted down. Later that day when I went to do a pre-bed check though I found Maple in the hay manger with her hooves at the cusp of escaping from the stall! I guess the people who had goats in that stall before mustn’t have had baby dwarf goats that could squeeze into the manger! Out came the tools and I made a hatch for the top of the manger so that I could load the manger but then have it latch closed to prevent escape. Other interest for the goats in their first week came in the form of inquisitive cats peering into the stall and plumbers digging in a water line to the barn (deep enough to avoid winter freeze). During the digging many large rocks were unearthed and the kind gentleman with the digger arranged these rocks inside the goat’s pen so that they have something to jump around and play on. It was a big hit, goats are built for the mountains so anything for them to climb on is welcomed with big leaps! As the goats are still babies it will be a while until we are getting milk but at the moment I am just so happy to get to watch them have fun and grow!