
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...
- 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.
- As loud as we had prepared for, nothing compares to the yelling that sounds like a baby being murdered lol.
- They let you pick them up AND actually give a quick snuggle!!
- They do NOT smell bad - like at all, at least not yet
- 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".
- They give a sort of sneeze sound when they are nervous or startled
- They are afraid of everything that is new to them and snort a lot
- They are picky with the type and temp of water they drink, they prefer light coloured buckets over dark
- They would much rather lay beside you chewing their cud than in their pen. They prefer inside to outside - maybe its the heat?
- You can see them regurgitate the food back into their mouths, and begin the chew process all over again.
- They think they live in our screened in gazebo with us.
- 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.
- They hate bugs as much as we do
- The tattoo ink sticks to them for a long time yet somehow gets all over our hands so easily.
- 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.
- Their poo is like.a tiny waterfall of tiny pellets that just fall out. Actually adorable and even smaller than chicken poo.
- They have cute reactions to their own reflection, scared, quickly turns to curious, and then WHAM - headbutt!
- They seem to have a different bleat for all of us, or at least for what they want. Georges is the worst!
- They follow us everywhere
- 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.