Well, it’s finally happened. After waiting for all the health testing, then the breeding, and then the transportation to all come through, she has arrived!
We picked her up on Saturday and as expected, she is HUGE compared to the other goats! I decided I wanted to keep her quarantined for a few weeks, but it’s proving to not work well. (She is our only goat to have arrived without any friends and she is lonely as heck by herself, and therefore VERY LOUD. Poor girl! I just wanted to be extra safe in case she arrived with a cold or anything else that might show itself.)
So we made it two days before introducing her to a few friends but the friends don’t like her much. Kissy, our Alpha goat, went head to head with her and the jury is still out on who will end up top goat.
What Honey thinks of Kissy!
With our very submissive Mini Nubians, there is little to no head butting action because it’s clear they won’t be competition at all for her.
So she’s had a new friend on and off but for the night she sleeps alone in a new enclosure Christine fixed up for her…the old chicken coop modified a bit to keep wind out.
What else is new? We bought some pee tests for goats because we’re not brave enough to draw blood ourselves yet and we are eager to find out who is pregnant. The tests are supposedly 92% accurate. First, we tested Felicia who is getting VERY round very quick. She has had two babies each of the two times she has freshened but I wonder/worry that she’s got four in there (entirely possible with goats). She still has three months to go and she’s a big, big girl! She tested positive for pregnancy. Then we tested Kissy, my goat who was going to be due first with her babies, but last week unfortunately suffered a miscarriage.
That is a whole story in and of itself, so I guess I’ll pause and tell you what happened. Christine was out of town and we have a little non-funny joke about how every time she goes on a work trip terrible things happen here. This started back in New York when she first left us to travel and my youngest daughter decided to lick ant poison out of the window. Last time she traveled you may remember that the rooster got out and viciously attacked me and then the dog ate him (but he somehow survived in the end). Well, so this time I went to meet a new farm friend and then as I was driving home I hit a skunk which almost ruined our car. Seriously, the smell was inside and outside of the car. In fact, over a week later, you can still smell it on the back tire if you get close. Ugh. And then, the next day I woke up to find that Kissy, my first and favorite goat, had some discharge. Right away I recognized what it was from Facebook pictures I’ve seen others post. She was miscarrying. Honestly, my heart broke. I sat with the goats and just cried and cried. It’s interesting how animals act when humans have emotions. My dogs will come over and lay in my lap. The cat does this as well. The horses completely ignore me and keep doing whatever they’re doing (other people have more caring horses, or so I hear, LOL). The goats…they ALL came out of the enclosure to stare at me. They looked very concerned. They all had the exact same look on their faces. But none dared to move or come close to me; just stare from a distance. Eventually I put my hand out and was surprised to find that Bridget and Dollop, the Mini Nubians who really are pretty aloof and indifferent for the most part, came over to me and put their heads down so that I could pet them. This was incredibly unusual behavior for them! They stayed with me allowing me to pet them until I got up several minutes later.
Now, back to the Kissy. She had things come out, nothing graphic because it was early in the pregnancy, but she never seemed upset, she never seemed sickly. She just acted like her normal spunky self. So I was at least grateful for this.
We chose to test her for pregnancy because I had been told that she could have miscarried one baby but still have retained healthy babies that could be born around their due time. She tested negative.
Then we tested Bridget, who was bred two weeks ago. The test does not tell you how early it works and we got a negative. I don’t know if this means she is not pregnant still or if it’s just too early to show up in the test.
Now, Dollop, our doofy Mini Nubian, is suddenly HUGE. We are very sure she is pregnant but we keep missing our opportunity to catch her pee in a cup (it’s hard to do, in fact!). She has had triplets at both of her freshenings and I am wondering if she too is having like four! I actually hope not as more babies means more chances for complications. But maybe they just show very quickly. I don’t know.
Our only other potentially pregnant goat is the new goat who was bred a few weeks ago, maybe it’s been three weeks now. We haven’t tested her yet either. We’ve mostly been bonding with her; she’s a little HUGE love bug! She came with the name Faith, which is just way too common, plus I like two or more syllable names. So we have really struggled with finding a name that fits her and that we both agree on. I thought Pearly was the perfect name for her but no one else liked it. So it seems we’ve come to agree upon the name Honey. I call her Honey Bunny.
She’s our first La Mancha that doesn’t have “mini” in there and she does not have cute little ears like the Minis do. I think she’s absolutely beautiful but already people on Facebook are asking if she has any ears (some people think La Manchas have had their ears surgically removed!). Oh well, to each their own because I think they are super amazing looking.
Here’s a side by side comparison of sizes…one of our smallest goats, Burrito vs our new biggest goat, Honey Bunny! (Christine does not know I call her this; she may not be so excited, haha!)
Burrito the Nigerian Dwarf 
Honey the La Mancha
Now, here’s something both Christine and myself 100% agree on…
NO MORE GOATS!
But seriously…NO MORE. A dozen is nice. Actually, for our milk needs it’s probably 9 too many, but it’s hard once you get attached. We’ll see who we are able to part with in the spring after the babies arrive.