We had a great weekend at the goat farm.
In spite of what Christine says, we actually aren’t buying these particular goats because they are “cute;” we have done research and chose these particular goats for a few reasons.
First of all, unfortunately small goats are suddenly “the thing” to buy and even city folk are doing it. The new amazing pet that everyone should have! Woo-hoo!
Except that it drives up prices like crazy because when people are set on getting a tiny cute thing they will often pay big money. So I’ve been seeing tiny baby goats for $500-700. Babies are not awesome for us because our whole point is to get milk, but luckily Nigerian Dwarfs (shortened to Nigies) mature and can be bred around 7 or 8 months old. They’re pregnant for almost 5 months which means that it will be a whole year before we can get any milk from them.
Does (female goats) “in milk” are really tricky to find in our area (which makes sense…why sell an animal when you can charge $16 a gallon for her milk?) so we decided to get two babies and go from there.
And by “we” I really mean Christine, because even though I admit goats are sweet, I’m *still* a sheep person.
Actually, scratch that, I’m honestly a pig person and probably always will be.
Nothing makes me squee from the inside out like watching piggy videos on Youtube. Or seeing piggy pictures on Facebook. And that’s exactly why we ended up with two mini pigs living IN our house.
(Due to some unfortunate circumstances, our deaf pig had to be rehomed to a family without children. We still have a Juliana pig but he is currently living at a preschool and he’s so incredibly happy there with all the children that I’m struggling to pull him away from that happiness. Unless the school decides at some point that they don’t want him there, I am going to let him stay, which honestly breaks my heart but I do think it’s the best choice for him.)
Why am I talking about pigs?
Back to goats.
The ones we found to buy are a better price because they aren’t registered. Only their dad is registered and so they are disqualified. I’ve gone back and forth on how I feel about this, because we will need to sell babies that come from these girls when they are grown. And I am guessing that papered goats are probably easier to sell. However, I feel that we have another niche that’s going to work well for us so I’m not too worried about the fact that our goats aren’t registered. I think the people who seek us out to buy our goats will also find this part less important.
The great thing (only great thing?? Just kidding…) about getting baby goats is that we can raise them ourselves and know that they are eating organic feed and minerals from the very beginning.
We can raise them as holistically as possible and that’s important to us since we will be drinking their milk some day. What an animal eats (and the toxins you put into it in other ways) does come out in the milk. For example, I personally don’t want GMOd “sweet feed” being fed to an animal I’m drinking milk from but not everyone understands that. And one of my children has multiple food sensitivities and can’t have corn, but the feeds that the average person gives to farm animals are often made with corn.
So sometimes I have to wonder, is she getting eczema from the milk itself or is it from what the goat was fed? It will be nice to be able to know for sure when we live on our own farm and know what our animals are eating.
And one reason we went with this goat breeder is because she is a big advocate of allowing goats to keep their horns.
Not only is disbudding (burning the horns off) a painful practice, it is removing something very useful for the animal. Horns have blood vessels in them and they regulate the body temperature of an animal. Here in the south it gets to be 110 degrees with quite a bit of humidity as well. To take away something that could help an animal cool off just because the animal “might” become aggressive makes me sad.
I went to two petting zoos in the past week and both had Nigies with horns. They were not aggressive nor did any humans lose an eye (it was a petting zoo!). This goat breed is known for being good natured (especially the females) so I don’t believe I will worry much unless I see upsetting behavior with our own goats in the future.
I also watched (okay, fine, even goats make me squee sometimes) the mama goat of one of our new babies use her horn to scratch her own itchy back. Handy things, those horns. God must have put them there for a reason!
Oh and one more sad thing about disbudding…if the vet (or breeder) doesn’t burn off enough their horns will grow back completely twisted and much more dangerous than the original shape.
And if they burn off too much…their little brains… 🙁
And yes, baby goats do scream in pain even when the procedure goes according to plan. This isn’t like filing nails.
By the way, in this country you cannot SHOW a goat with horns. Ugh, I hate things like that. Whack off body parts or they don’t fit the “breed standard.” Well that makes sense…NOT. Just like corgis getting their tails docked and dogs in general getting their dewclaws removed. All body parts have a function. If we all stand up and refuse to be a part of these outdated practices we will be able to make a difference.
So you get it…this breeder is on the same page. And that’s REALLY hard to find around here!
And this breeder also keeps the baby goats with their moms. It is a complete myth that bottlefed babies are more friendly. They are more friendly because you spend time with them! Babies of all species need real milk, not man-made chemicals. And I want to drink milk from an animal that did not drink chemicals, so again this is part of the organic holistic philosophy. We want the healthiest start for our animals.
One of our goats was sadly rejected by her mother and she’s receiving a bottle, but like Christine wrote in her last post, she is still getting her mama’s milk. Our other baby is nursing just fine on her mama (they are half sisters sharing the same father goat but different mothers).
So really it’s not about these goats being especially cute. I think they just have a good start and that’s important to us. The cute factor is a bonus!
So now my time is spent trying to figure out the best shelters for our baby goats. We have plenty of land and grass and brushy stuff for them to enjoy, and they have a run-in, but we need them to be safe at night. They will still be small when we bring them home and our livestock guardian dog is too young to protect them at night right now. So I’m looking at things we can build to lock them up tight at night where they will be safe from predators, like a chicken coop except goat-proof. Goat proofing, I’ve learned, makes human baby proofing look like nothing.
Goats are real trouble.
So I’m continuing to look for something that will work for the goats and our budget!