Goatology 101

If you want to buy a few dairy goats, I hope you don't get them the way I got mine. "Happy birthday!", he said, as I stood speechless, looking at the two black & white full-grown females in the back of his truck. "Oh, and one of them has to be milked..."

It didn't seem to matter that we didn't have a barn for these animals. "That's okay," he replies. "Ralph says we can just tie them up to concrete blocks and leave them in the back yard." Uh-huh. You mean, like coyote bait?

But I've only seen one goat in my entire life and that was a poor old buck tied up at a local farm stand. Milk a goat? Oh boy...

So while he set about throwing up a temporary shelter for Hillary and Hattie, I tried to make Hattie stand still while I figured out how get her milked out. It wasn't much fun. Turns out she had been a field goat and had never been milked. She kicked and stamped and bounced around until we both ended up with milk all over our hind quarters. But I did it. Yes I did! I milked my first goat! Huh? I have to do it again in 12 hours? Every day? For how long? Oh boy...

Lesson learned and advice to others:
Threaten (with life and limb!) any spouse who even thinks it might be a cute idea to buy you a farm animal as a present, without doing some planning. Planning is defined as (1) FOOD, (2) SHELTER, and, oh, maybe something like a (3) BOOK on how to take care of said farm animal.

Somehow we all survived. They endeared themselves to me, despite their very different personalities. Hillary had been a pet and thought her future was always going to be a frisky, carefree debutante. Hattie the field goat figured that the trade-off to being pastured and delivering her babies on her own wasn't too bad considering that no one was herding her around and telling her what to do. It was a three-way battle of the wills, but in the end, they acquiesced and allowed me to be the Queen.

I'm one of those people who doesn't like to not know something that I should know. It wasn't all that easy, back in 1993, to get access to information about goats. No books at the library. No internet. I called and wrote the folks at Cornell. I talked to farmers. I met alot of people who "used to have goats". The advice (and warnings!) I received told me that this whole idea of keeping and raising goats was going to require more than just a passing interest. But what the hay...I didn't have much to do. Renovating an 1850 farmhouse on 40 neglected acres, that's all. Scrambling to get it finished before winter set in, that's all. Filling the pantry with home-canned goodies, that's all.

Take it from me: raising goats isn't an impossible task, but it is difficult if you don't take the steps to prepare for their arrival and long-term care. You can do it the way I did and still fall in love with goats. Yes, they're that wonderful of an animal and worth every moment spent on them and with them.