Goats: The Back Story

We had planned to get chickens our first year and wait until the following spring to get a goat.  I had emailed around looking for where to get chicks since we weren’t planning to get enough to form a full order from a hatchery.  In conversations with “Farmer Joe” on where to get chickens the topic took a turn and we were discussing goats.  He had recommended them to me to help clear blackberry bushes that are so pervasive in the area and I had admitted we wanted to get a dairy goat eventually.  I had already been doing my research in anticipation relying heavily on http://www.fiascofarm.com, Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, and even The Goat Handbook.

A few days later Joe sent me an email suggesting that we could “borrow” a goat he would be getting.  Joe would be traveling to Oregon to pick up some goats from a relative that could no longer keep them.  He knew there was a dairy breed in the mix and that she might have been bred and therefore pregnant.  He offered to let us “borrow” the goat in the hopes that she would kid (have a baby goat) and be ready for milking.  We could see how we felt about milking.  He insisted that we could return her at any time if we decided we weren’t so keen on the process.  I was thrilled and thought, ‘Loaner goat!  Why not!?’ and quickly called Bengt in California to get his blessing.  He agreed it seemed like a foolproof plan so I called Joe back and arranged to pick up the goat in a couple weeks.  We needed a goat structure first!

We had decided we would keep the structure simple and build it ourselves.  We had done a back-of-the-napkin plan and I estimated it would cost us around $400 dollars to build an 8 foot by 16 foot structure using plywood and 4×4 posts.  We have since learned to have a *real* plan before undertaking any structures in the future.  We started scouting our heavily wooded property for a location for the structure.  We wanted something relatively level which is not entirely easy on a property that is on the side of a valley.  We also knew it would not have running water or electricity in all likelihood so it needed to be accessible by foot or truck.  The closer it was to the house, the more likely we could put in either of those systems in the future.

After tromping around in the woods for half a day, Bengt climbed up on a fallen tree and announced he’d found our location.  It was perfect.  Just up the old logging road from the house, only a few yards back from the back yard, but far enough that through the trees you couldn’t actually see it.  The only catch was that there was a 62 year old tree (I counted!) that had fallen across the logical path from the road to the mostly clear spot.  Bengt was thrilled to give his new chain saw its first real trial.

The first weekend was spent working on the tree to open up the pathway to the clearing.  We hauled some good firewood out of there.  The second and part of the third weekend were putting up our poorly preconceived structure.  We, of course, underestimated the lumber necessary and found our happy-go-lucky approach to building design didn’t always work out as we had thought it would.  We ended up spending more on the order of $600 in building the structure, partly on our underestimation of the number of corrugated roof panels it takes.  After some long days we felt we had something good enough to manage for now.  We then undertook the arduous task of putting up fencing.  Now that is something that someone should create an instructional video for!

We had never put up fencing in our lives, let alone 150 feet of 4 foot high braided non-climbing horse fence.  We had t-posts, a t-post driver, a roll of fencing wire and the foolish determination that only comes with not having any idea what you are actually doing.  We wrestled that roll of fencing, pulled the fencing, and tied the fencing coming out of the whole afternoon sorer and more exhausted than we’d ever been, and not particularly confident that the mess we’d made would actually contain a wily goat.  They are known for being hard on fences and good escape artists.

At this point we didn’t have a gate, we’d left room for it, but it was now time to pick up the goat we had decreed to be named Molly after Molly from Fiasco Farm.  We threw down a moderate layer of white shavings for bedding and put up a couple bucket hooks to take flat-back buckets for water and food.  We had already picked up a bale of alfalfa and had it down in the garage.  We slapped up a pallet where the gate would be and Bengt secured it as best he could to the fence posts and corner of the goat structure.  We thought it would hold her until the following weekend when we could put up a gate.  We dashed off to pick up Molly and drove her home in the back of our “farm truck”, a ‘94 Land Rover Discovery.

We settled Molly in and retired back to the house eager to take a breather and rest after a couple of long weekends putting together her structure.  As I’m sitting in the living room lazily looking out the living room picture window I see something… a deer?… Oh no… “Goat!” I shouted.  “Goat!  Molly’s in the front yard!” I shouted to Bengt in the kitchen.  We both jumped up in a panic and ran out the front door just as Molly was sauntering up to the front door casually as if to say, ‘I’ll live here too, kthxbye.’  We broke down in the giggles that come easily when you are exhausted, while we walked Molly back up to her new home.  Our only solution was to secure her in her structure by attaching a sheet of plywood over the door way.  I spent the week using a feed bucket to climb up on in order to pitch myself over the short wall  to change her food and water.  We finished the gate the next weekend.

We became immediately smitten with Molly, her lopsided grin and gentle demeanor.  Any idea that we might “return” her quickly vanished.  She didn’t end up kidding that season, but she’s earned her place in our family.  She is of the Oberhasli breed and we are guessing that she was approximately 2 years old when we got her.

Goats aren’t solitary creatures, we eventually learned, and while Molly never complained too much they are happier in herds, so that necessitated… more goats!