Adventures in Dairy Goat Farming: Part 2

    When G and I were dating and eventually planning our life together many, many years ago we discussed everything from where we would live, how many kids we would have, where we would vacation, when we would retire, and how we would decorate our house.  One thing that never ever came up though was any mention of livestock.



    I think maybe once I asked if G liked the name Jamboree for a baby girl, to which he said if we ever got a goat I could name it Jamboree (he has a history of rejecting my off-the-wall baby girl names, and by the way we have three goats and not one of them is named Jamboree).  And I think the idea of having a chicken or two crossed my mind after all my parakeets died.

    But now we have 12 chickens and 3 goats with daily mentions of what farm animals we're going to accumulate next.

    Starting with baby goats.

    When the whole thing started, it was one baby goat we were going to have.  But G has learned to gradually warm me up the idea of more livestock and, somehow, now, we are somehow planning on up to EIGHT baby goats next spring.

   So, how does one go about going from two female goats and a "fixed" male goat to anywhere from five to eleven goats and a couple gallons of milk a day?

    Well, I have learned, you simply put an ad on Craigslist looking for a goat "companion."

    Goat dating ads were never part of the plan I had for my life.  But now almost daily I find myself humming, "Match-maker, match-maker, make me a match..."

    Evidently, at least around where we live, goat "companions" and fellow goat farmers willing to let you borrow their daddy goats or board your female goats are not hard to come by.  Within hours, G had a couple potential suitors for our lady goats and the next evening the three boys went down the road to interview one of them.  (Typical boys though, they didn't even ask the goat what his name was, so for now we just have to call him Mr. Goat).  Well, the neighbor Mr. Goat was accepted for the position and now the boys are making plans to bring him to our house for a couple-week-long playdate.

     The best part of all this though was one evening at supper, GD asked, "When will I be old enough to understand why our girl goats need to visit a boy goat in order to get baby goats?  Will I understand when I'm five?"  To which we just replied, "You'll understand when you're older."  And changed the subject by telling him he could name the goats.  Forget about the birds and the bees.  At my house we'll have the goats and the chickens discussion.