Many of you have seen this picture...
This photo was our original "logo" for StotesMcGoats you could say. Just a goat face right? Actually, this is a photo of Bobo our very first goat. Bobo was just your standard everyday Alpine wether (fixed male) bought off good'ol Craigslist to eat down a five acre lot. Except Bobo was anything but average.
Bobo's story starts with his previous owners who bought him as a cute bottle baby for the intention of raising for butcher. They didn't have proper housing for a single young goat so they used what they had. A pontoon boat. For $75 we bought a Craigslist goat who lived on a pontoon boat who would turn out to be one of the biggest life changing adventures for two unsuspecting people.
We knew absolutely nothing about goats. The property we were renting at the time was set up as a horse property. You know, five string hot wire fences. We woke up that first morning to a goat standing on the hood the truck. Our first lesson is that wire fences don't hold goats. So we bought field fence, and built a smaller pen to contain this new creature we had obtained. Bobo knocked on the front door. Our second lesson is that we didn't know how to build fences for goats. Eventually we figured out good enough and realized that Bobo was lonely. Back to Craigslist we went. How do we move full sized goats with out a trailer? We bought the infamous small red truck bed trailer with a topper on it and picked up our two new Alpine/Nubian does (female goats), named them Jazz and Betch. This was going to be great! ...It wasn't...got backed up to the gate and opened the trailer to have the goats jump out on to the top of the trailer and out in to the yard. We chased those goats all over the place. The doe named Betch earned her name because she made us chase her three miles down a busy highway before she just decided she'd had enough and stopped in the middle of the road and waited for us to catch up and drag her home. Eventually Betch calmed down and became one of our family favorites, same could not be said for Jazz...
A few months after bringing home our new does, we discovered they came to us already bred and our herd of three became six. First experience with baby goats, we were hooked. I mean talk about the cutest little stinkers you ever saw. One thing we learned about baby goats though is that they can walk under, over and through fences, luckily for us, they don't stray to far from mom. Bobo was the best baby sitter, a young guy still himself at the time, he loved to play giving the momma's a break. To this day, watching happy goats run and play is still one of my favorite parts of goat ownership. As the babies, grew curiosity got us and we build a milk stand for our does. It was definitely an adventure the first time we put them on the stand and milked. Goat milk the first time you try it can be a bit odd but once you discover cooking with goat milk, it's a game changer. Anything that is creamy or cheesy is enhanced by goat milk in place of cow milk. Well...almost everything. At one point we had gotten to where we didn't use cow's milk anymore, just goat. That's when I learned that cow's milk has a place too. Goat's milk used to make instant chocolate pudding was by far the worst thing I've ever made. Never again. We learned about cheese making and attempted making it ourselves. We've had successes and major failures. I can't say that cheese making is our calling. In researching cheese making though, we also learned that the quality of the animal, it's feed and how the dairy is handled/stored all plays a part in the flavor of the milk. We went shopping once again for a quality dairy doe...
Zelda was a big Alpine doe from a family farm who was a raw milk permitted farm. She was supposedly fully registered and had been shown bla bla bla...The registration the owner couldn't find and would mail it to us later. Boy was I gullible. This my first experience with a dishonest seller. I was soon blocked from all contact with her seller after the fact. Registered goats get tattoos, not scrapie tags and we bought a four year old doe who was actually more like eight years old, but it all worked out. All of her biosecurity tests came back negative and honestly papers weren't that big of a deal to us. Zelda was perfect for us. She was docile, experienced and full of personality. She was a doe who milked very well and wasn't just a good mom to her kids but to every other kid in our small herd.
We've had many goat's over the years but these few really stand out and made an impact on us. Goats are an experience or an adventure to be for sure. We learned most of our lessons in goat care the hard way. My biggest recommendations if you are considering getting goats or into any kind of livestock really, is to do your own research, use your vet to gain or double check your knowledge, and find a mentor you trust. From experience the social media animal care groups or "vet" groups are a danger. Yes, there can be some really knowledgeable people in those groups but only know one part of what you're treating. It's impossible to diagnose something without having seen it. That being said there are many symptoms that can appear to be this or that and most in those groups "know what it is, and how to treat it" with out actually knowing and you'll end up mis-treating or treating for unnecessarily.
Comments