Seriously, if you’re thinking about getting a goat you can’t have just one…unless you have enough time to spend with your goat 24/7…I hope you don’t spend THAT MUCH time with a goat. When we got our first goat Daisy we knew we wanted 2, but we hadn’t found a second goat yet. We brought her home and put her in the pen and the screaming commenced. Have you seen the screaming goats on YouTube? We wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into, she was SO NOISY!
We began our search for a goat, any goat, ok…maybe not ANY goat. At the feed store an employee told us about a local Nigerian Dwarf breeder who had some goats for sale, so we called, super excited to find a friend for Daisy. When we arrived we saw a pen full of baby goats and one older doe. Into to the car went the older doe, Lucy. Daisy and Lucy were a happy pair and all was quiet.
There is another reason why you can’t have just one goat. It’s because they are so awesome you will want a barn full of them. They are like a little cow crossed with a dog and a cat…friendly and silly, they like to jump and climb and then relax in the sun, they love to eat and they produce milk. If you like to garden all the eating produces another thing, your plants will be happy and healthy because your goats will provide heaps of goat berries to compost, plus you’ll get a workout cleaning the goat barn and will save money on a gym membership. Another thing…in order for a doe to make that tasty milk she’ll have to have a baby goat, baby goats are called kids. Who can resist an adorable kid??? They’re always playing…hopping, twisting, spinning, running and they like to snuggle.
Now that your doe has a kid and you have all that delicious goat milk you can make cheese, ice cream, caramel…you can even make goat milk soap! You may have heard goats eat everything, that’s not true, they don’t eat EVERYTHING, like your expencive hay…they’ll nibble on it and then sleep on the rest. That’s because goats are browsers, they will eat your weeds, they love blackberries and brush (just be careful or they’ll eat your garden).
We started out with 2 goats, but today our herd is up to 12. This is our currently our maximum herd size, it’s a manageable number for us, enough goats to feel like we have a real herd, but not so many that we don’t have time to pay attention to each one and tend to goatie chores, like hoof trimming, without feeling overwhelmed. It’s enough I might be able to sneak just one more goat in without my husband noticing (don’t worry, I wouldn’t really do such a thing 😉).
FOUR CEDARS 