What I have learned in 48 hrs of living with goats

When I was pregnant with my second child, my father had just passed away, and we had spent a fair bit of time at the hospital and finally making funeral arrangements. Obviously the worst couple of weeks in my lifetime, and exhausting and overwhelming with grief and sadness, but I still had a 2 year old to put smile on everyday for. I wanted to do something fun with her to get a break from all the sadness. We ended up in Jungle Cat world, Orono. The only thing I really remember from that, is us all falling in love with the little baby goats! From then on, I was determined to have baby goats as soon as life would allow - Because you only live once.

The thought never crossed my mind again until a few years ago, my husbands grandparents had gotten a cow to raise one spring, and a pig the next, for the freezer come the fall. The cow rotation was getting to be a bit much for his grandma as she would adore him, like a pet (They would raise as a calf). and he would throw his weight around, make it somewhat dangerous to care for. Of course, I'm sure it ws hard to have them "get on the truck". I immediately thought goats! You can buy goats for meat, milk, or hair (fur). Every time I saw them I would bring up goats, one day they said to me "Why don't you get goats!". That was the point, where I thought to myself - yep I will get goats -some day!

So some day has arrived. When we bought 2 acres a couple of years ago I had 2 things in mind: Goats and Airbnb. Both are happening this summer. It took a year of reading, and researching and convincing. the girls were 100% on board, George was the tough one. Last October, I reached out to a breeder with some questions about her goats, and the breed. There were a few others that I reached out to, but she responded right away, and that got my thinking of putting our name down on a list for the next year. We had 10 months to fully prepare for goats!

So now that they are here: What are some things I did not know that I have learned in 24 hrs...

1. They are incredibly smaller than what I had imagined, even at 10 and 12 weeks old. They are much smaller and lighter than my beagles.
2. As loud as we had prepared for, nothing compares to the yelling that sounds like a baby being murdered lol.
3. They let you pick them up AND actually give a quick snuggle!!
4. They do NOT smell bad - like at all, at least not yet
5. They are amazing escape artists - We thought we had all of our bases covered for this one, but Stella can and will slide herself through 4".
6. They give a sort of sneeze sound when they are nervous or startled
7. They are afraid of everything that is new to them and snort a lot
8. They are picky with the type and temp of water they drink, they prefer light coloured buckets over dark
9. They would much rather lay beside you chewing their cud than in their pen. They prefer inside to outside - maybe its the heat?
10. You can see them regurgitate the food back into their mouths, and begin the chew process all over again.
11. They think they live in our screened in gazebo with us.
12. They KNOW when they are doing something they shouldn't be ie. Mimzie will mouth on a cord, we will casually take it away from her and she runs to get away.
13. They hate bugs as much as we do
14. The tattoo ink sticks to them for a long time yet somehow gets all over our hands so easily.
15. They eat and rink way less than what I imagined, we thought we would go through an entire bale in a couple of days - Its been 4 and they have maybe gone through a quarter of it.
16. Their poo is like.a tiny waterfall of tiny pellets that just fall out. Actually adorable and even smaller than chicken poo.
17. They have cute reactions to their own reflection, scared, quickly turns to curious, and then WHAM - headbutt!
18. They seem to have a different bleat for all of us, or at least for what they want. Georges is the worst!
19. They follow us everywhere
20. One wants us to follow her everywhere and gets quite annoyed if we do not follow her (she wants to run into the woods - we do not)

So despite all the research ahead of time - here are 20 random things I learned over the past 2 days - and I'm sure they will teach me SO much more each and every day.