Maybe you need that little whether to be a neutralizer, so if you go ahead and do get your doeling, maybe you can just keep him.I was so touched by all your readers' comments, so heart-felt and healing. Very good to look up Juliette de Bairacli Levy, and maybe let the goats browse for their own nutrients? I don't think the point is really to examine what you did wrong, if you did, but how you can balance letting this herd forage independently, with your training them.

btw, I've just discovered a new Thoreau, who actually lived twice as long as Thoreau did, on his own, but in solitude, in the woods on a little farm in W NC, Thomas Crow Ransom, and wish you could put his book, from 2005, Zoro's Field, My life in the Appalachian Woods, on any list of mutual reads for us, the way you did with Thoreau?? Mainly because this writer's personality and honesty really is the main thread, which yours, in this blog is, too!!

I'd like to chime in with the others and express my condolences. You have the peace of knowing your animal lived the best and happiest of lives a goat could live. As for the wether, I'd take him back before you or Aurora form an attachment. Any wethers I've kept from what in myself is probably an excess of sentimentality, I've later regretted. I have one now, in fact, that my young grandchildren named and are very fond of, and who is a tame and loving clown with humans but absolutely obnoxious to his herdmates.

What a cutie! Maybe a whether isn't such a bad idea for the homestead? They won't encounter the short lifespan of a buck in rut, nor will you have to encounter the smell. Plus, a whether won't experience nutritional difficulties with pregnancies. They can be the surrogate companion, hedge clipper and compost making all-rounder. That's if you decide to keep him.