All of the cute Nigerian Dwarves we’ve visited, posted about, and become attached to are not going to work out after all.
See, I thought I was doing everything right.
I did my goat research.
I knew what hay to get.
I knew which trees to grow for them (goats are browsers, not grazers, meaning they do best when they have access to trees and bushes they can eat).
I picked out my herbal wormer.
I was so happy to find a breeder who understood the importance of horns.
I was also excited that she made it a priority to keep the babies with the mothers and be dam raised whenever possible (the one we were especially attached to was rejected by her mother, so she was bottlefed, but the breeder was pumping the milk and giving it to the baby, so she was still getting all of the nutrients).
I was not thrilled with the thought of the babies receiving vaccines, but as a newbie I decided to let it slide. After all, my outdoor dogs will be receiving some vaccines, though they will be minimal and better spaced out than most vets would recommend. My homeopathic vet recommends completely avoiding vaccines for any and all dogs and while I think that may be fine and well with indoor dogs that don’t leave their own city backyard, it just doesn’t feel right to me in the country with dogs that live outside 24/7. I’m mentioning this because while I am more holistic than most, I also feel better with a few vaccines for the dogs and a really clean diet to keep them healthy and hopefully help them heal through any side effects they may get from the vaccines.
The big difference is I don’t drink milk from my dogs.
What you are consuming becomes a part of you, and it can be a poison or a healing remedy for your body. I don’t care to consume any mercury, aluminum, and other toxins and foreign substances from a vaccine, and that’s what happens when you are drinking milk or eating meat from a vaccinated animal. The weird thing is that they can vaccinate animals and still call that product “organic” but if you look into what is in vaccines you’ll know there’s nothing organic about them.
So anyway, vaccines…not that excited about them being given to the goat babies, but hey, maybe they are necessary…that was my thought for a week or so.
Then I did some goat research and found out how many holistic people avoid the vaccines completely for their goats and many of them were saying things like “they are 8th generation vaccine-free goats” which I found interesting! But anyway, again, it was what it was…this breeder chose to vaccinate. Several times. Several times before the goats were even ready to be picked up at 8 weeks old.
Then I did some goat research and started asking about people who had grain-free goats. I was particularly interested in grain-free goats because my youngest daughter cannot consume any grains at all and it seems that her sensitivities expand to the diet of the animal that she’s consuming a food from, be it eggs, milk, or meat. For her this shows up as eczema on her arms and shoulders and also severe constipation.
I was curious about whether it is possible to have grain-free dairy goats and when I asked people about this the responses I received were that the goats that do best grain-free are the ones that have never had grain. It seems that once they’ve had grain, their stomach metabolizes foods differently and then without grain they end up becoming underweight quite easily (for milking goats, maybe not goats that don’t need all the extra calories). So I was told by several people that I should ask the breeder not to give the goats any grains so that when we got them they might be able to thrive without grain. When I asked the breeder to keep them grain-free, somehow that started a big conversation which ended in us finding out that not only was there going to be grain, it was not going to be organic or GMO free (Purina! Eek) and that these goats were definitely not in any way shape or form organic because already in their one month of life they’d had chemical wormer as well as a chemical lice product. In their ONE MONTH of life all those chemicals had been put onto them.
Now, I still like this breeder, I think she’s a really nice person, I think she cares about her goats, but I think we just have very different views on organic food and chemicals.
If these were to be pet goats, then maybe that would be a different story (though I’d still feel similarly as I don’t plan to eat my horses or drink their milk yet they too eat non-GMO whole grain feeds and get fecal tests rather than routine worming). I’m just not wanting to eventually consume milk from goats that have had all these chemicals on them.
And I certainly don’t want my daughter to drink that milk.
So Christine and I talked. There might have been a few tears because we’d developed a relationship with the goats. We tried to figure out what made sense and in the end we knew we wanted to stick to our values and vision which is 100% organic holistically raised animal products.
The breeder was very kind. She gave us back our deposit and we parted ways.
I started looking for holistically raised goats in our area. And it was interesting, I ended up finding several Nubian and La Mancha breeders, but I found absolutely zero Nigerian Dwarf breeders. And while I personally fell in love with La Mancha, Christine was so heartbroken about losing the Nigies that I wanted to find some replacements for her.
The only offer I got for Nigies was someone two states away from us. So I put that thought on hold and texted a holistic breeder whose ad I had seen on Craigslist a month ago but who had already sold the two goats from the advertisement by the time I texted her. I had found out previously that we had a mutual friend in common, so I didn’t feel too weird texting her again and asking her if she could tell me if she knew of any Nigerian Dwarf breeders who raised their goats holistically. She ended up calling me to say that the twin doelings from her ad were still with their goat mama and she felt so sorry that my goat search was still unsuccessful that she called the guy who had bought them and asked if I could buy them instead (she said he buys goats from her regularly and they are just used to clear brush on his property, so she had expected he wouldn’t mind too much).
So in the end, these sisters became available to us again. But they are not Nigies, they are actually Mini Manchas, like the earless goats I have grown to love except a smaller size. I thought they would be a nice compromise for us since I like La Mancha and Christine likes small goats, but it was not the same in her mind and she still mourned the loss of the Nigies.
So after accepting the two Mini Mancha goats into our family, I did what any smart partner would do for their wife and I wrote the breeder back from two states away and picked out some goats. Not just three to replace the Nigies we’d lost, but five.
We figured if it was this much trouble to find holistically raised Nigies we should plan on getting some boys so that next year when we want to start breeding all these girls we will have a source of good organic holistically raised sperm.
It only makes sense, right?
This breeder just happened to send me the cutest goat picture I’ve ever come across (I’m serious!) and this sweet boy for sale happened to be a Mini Mancha. So now we’ve got one buckling Nigie totally unrelated to our three Nigie doelings and one Mini Mancha buckling unrelated to our two twin Mini Mancha doelings.
Getting boys was not part of the plan, but now you see how it had to become a part of the plan. This breeder is everything I could hope for—she is a nurse but she sees the benefit of doing things naturally with her animals. These goats are third generation toxin-free goats: no shots, no chemicals, no GMOs. They do eat grain, but it’s organic and whole grain. She even taught me about an herbal wormer company I’d not heard of before: Ramshead. She’s liked it better than Land of Havilah, a pretty common natural worming company.
And she’s also agreed to meet us halfway which is great considering it’s a 14 hour drive. Eegahd, the things we do for holistically raised animals!
We absolutely cannot wait to offer people what we’ve had a hard time finding: holistically raised organic goats with great milk. I’m wanting to start a website now so that people like me can find holistically raised animals in their area.