Goat check
The decision has been made! I mailed in our down-payment, and we'll pick up our nanny goat
in October. In the meantime, we've got lots to do and to
decide. For example, we're still not 100% sure whether we want to
start with the lowest-work option (one doe and one 
wether)
or whether, since we're going to have two goats anyway, we might as
well bite the bullet and find another girl. On the plus side, two
girls would make us more likely to have enough milk to experiment with
cheese; on the minus side, two girls would mean double the kids to
manage in the spring and double the milking chores. At the moment,
we've resolved to let serendipity decide --- if another milk goat turns
up on craigslist in the next month that seems like a good fit for our
homestead, we'll go for it; otherwise, we'll find a cheap wether
somewhere to keep our first find company.
Since we won't be milking
at first, we can save half of our prep chores for later, but there's
still lots to do. It's time to finally add gates to our
starplate pastures, time to protect the one tree I care about that's
still growing there, and time to convert the starplate coop
into the starplate goat barn. The last task involves splitting
the building into stalls so the kids can be kept separate from the
mother(s) in the spring, adding food and water stations, and perhaps
making a food-storage room (to replace the metal garbage can we used
with chickens). My to-buy list currently includes hoof-trimming
supplies, loose minerals and maybe boluses for copper and kelp for
additional nutrition, leashes and breakaway collars, and a bit of feed
(although we're hoping to raise the goats on brush and weeds as much as
possible). And that doesn't even count the milking, kidding, and
disbudding supplies we'll need to think about before spring --- I guess
my goat endeavor is going to cost just as much as Mark's high-end mower.
Then there are the less
essential preparations that just make me happy. I decided to dry
some sweet-corn stalks in a shock to see if the goats will enjoy them as
a midwinter snack, and I also draped the sweet potato vines across the
porch for a similar reason. Too bad we've passed the time to plant
carrots and mangels --- next year!
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Congratulations
If your goat\s have free access to green brush and weeds you won’t need to supplement with much additional feed. The biggest reason I fed a little grain once a day was to count heads to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. The second reason was so they would come to the bucket if I needed to move them or put them back in if they got out.
We let our goats horns grow but we decided to dehorn our calf this spring for safety reasons. I tried the disbudding paste for the first time this year with good results. It was easy and I didn’t have to worry about cooking the animal’s brain with an iron.
Make sure you keep your animal feed locked up because a goat will eat itself to death. We almost lost a kid once that found a container of bird seed. A trip to the vet saved him. Lesson learned. Lock up all grain so they can’t get to it.
Good luck with your new addition.
Congratulations!! I hope you will love your goats. I second your first commenter on your main challenge: fencing. That, and deworming. All the other stuff will come. If you get in a pinch re: fencing, you can tie them. There may be a chorus of disapproval about that. But sometimes you just have to make due until your fence is secure. In some cases, you may want to fence the goats OUT of what you want to protect, if that is easier. You have a lot to protect. We used to have a big garden and fruit trees, before we got goats.. BUT we got them before we were really ready for them. In our case, we would have never been ready if we didn't just go for it.
Anyway, congrats again!! -Suz in VT
Sweet! I know I'm gonna love reading your post about the goats. I know a few have mentioned it, but " Fence Fence Fence fencing!!" They will climb, crawl, jump to make sure the garden is safe for you to eat out of. Don't let things people say cloud the fact that goats are just Amazing animals to keep though. They'll save you from those poison apples, if you have witch problems. Fencing is the only thing that needs to really be looked at. I don't like dehorning either. If you're just to keep girls, and you work with them so as they're not unruly things, it's something not to do imo. They set up their herd order and thats that. The reasons given for dehorning don't hold well with just a few goats. And that Tithonia you'll be getting in spring is Great to feed the goats. It's a large part of my herds diet. I don't feed any commercial feed to mine, and that plant helps a lot because it can grow so fast. But I think you will be surprised how fast they can clear out everything green. Just imagine an entire tree, but then see it as chewed and moisture removed. Thers not much mass left. I started with 2 goats and the food situation hit fast. That's also why if you're going to do the work of having 2, they both might as well be worth it. A wether is just a mouth to feed that's not giving much. Good luck getting everything done the way you want. I'm really curious for your post and updates about this.