Yep, we're goat owners. The beginning of January brought us a lovely opportunity to grow our homestead by adding goats. This wonderful addition is not without a lot of prayer and accepting that goat ownership is serious work. I'll be the first to admit, unless you've been there, it looks fun but it's work! I am in awe of the wonderful men and women I know that do what they can to support themselves. These lovely goats are the first "big animals" I feel we have owned. I'm learning all sorts of things like how to vaccinate my own herd, how to tattoo a tail, how to trim hooves, filter milk and cool it quickly, the list seems endless right now. But truly, I love our goats.
Please enjoy a laugh on our behalf. It's been a wild month!
This photo was taken on the night we brought Thelma (darker on the left) and Mama (pregnant) home. We knew it was right for us but we had nothing ready! Holy crap. So, our goats lived in the back of the trailer for a few days while we set up their pen and built them a great goat shack! They of course had food, water and we covered our trailer so they were warm and in a pen that is 6x12. Not tiny or cramped. But during this time, we went without water ourselves as it was below zero and our well froze. We would have loved to dedicate nothing but time to them but we needed water for US first. Living without a working toilet was no fun. Not to mention, building a pen and a goat shack in zero degree weather was not on my agenda when I went to "visit" them. I am so sincerely thankful for my husbands dedication to brave the freezing temps to get them a proper shelter and pen. I'm thankful for the missionaries who came to help him pound T posts in the frozen ground to secure the dog panels we had sitting around. It was a CRAZY week jumping into goat ownership!!
Damon built our goat shack completely for FREE! Woohoo!! The materials came from various projects and places, but it was really great to turn this would be garbage into 'waste not want not'. Our goats LOVE it. They jump on and off it all day and it provides multiple shelters for them.
Thelma is a little stand offish. She is wary of people being around her too much but we'll get her to come around. Time is on our side. She is about 10 months old right now, still a baby.
Mama is the opposite. She is the LOVE ON ME goat. She loves all people. She loves to be pet and loved on. She will follow the kids around and rub up against them to get their attention. She is really lovely.
So... You'll notice, in the above photos, Mama is quite large. She was carrying triplets, as I suspected. Now, when we got our goats, we were given an estimated due date of March.... Imagine my surprise when Feb 2nd I come out and see Mama much smaller and hear babies yelling for her to come back to them! I quickly yelled at the kids to go get Damon, I scooped up the two babies that were out in the snow and assessed that one of the triplets didn't make it. With no time to ponder that, Damon and I quickly wrapped up these tiny babies and brought them inside to warm them up. I was a bit panicked to say the least. I had all this stuff I was going to do... I had time right? I was going to build a birthing pen, be there for the kidding to help if needed, blah blah blah............ Nothing went as planned. Luckily Mama has done this before and after calling two friends for help, running around like an IDIOT, trying to figure out how to get Mama to deliver a placenta, tried bottle feeding baby goats... etc etc.... I mean seriously, after having four of my own babies, I didn't have bottles or a bottle warmer, nothing! So here I am, standing in Babys R Us, picking out a bottle warmer for my goats.... Yep.... Hysterical in hind sight......... After all that, this city-raised woman decided to put the baby goats back in with their mama and stay the heck out of the way! But it's a good tale now. Laugh!
This was Mama and her buckling and doeling the night they arrived. Now, if only I had her intuition, I would have sat down and wondered at her good work instead of stressing out all night long and acting like an idiot. Oh the stories that become great memories... I got up every few hours to walk out in the 10 degree weather to stare at her. I'm amazed I made it, she clearly knew what she was doing and every time I peaked in she looked at me like "what do you want?".... Well, this city-raised-woman wants to stare. Like it's a zoo, but on my own property. And I want to help if something goes wrong, and I want to apologize it wasn't all perfectly set up for her, and and........ Seriously, lack of sleep must have brought me to apologizing to my goat at 4 am in the dark while she was asleep with her kids.
Of course, our children are absolutely smitten with the baby goats. They are tiny goats, weighing less than 2 lbs each at birth. Here's Aurora loving on Jensen - our buckling.
Jensen and Collette with our kids on Daunika's bed. They want to hold them all the time and bickered about who got to go first!
Collette and Jensen, a lovely addition to our herd indeed.
This week our tasks for our homestead will include extending our goat pen to be about the size of 1/6th of an acre. I also have great hopes for Damon to build me a milking stand and a hay feeder. We're supervising Thelma around the little ones now that they are a week old and getting around better and are super fast runners. She isn't thrilled with them, but is starting to understand that being a jerk to them results in being beating on by a protective Mama goat!
What an amazing addition, nothing like jumping in!
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