Adventures in Dairy Goat Farming: Part 1

     G brought the goats home last April with the intention of turning them into dairy goats, and making them productive, worthwhile farm animals.   For the past six months they have really been nothing more than glorified pets, providing bare-back goat-riding sessions while we hemmed and hawed about keeping them, building them a goat barn, and taking the necessary steps to goat lactation.   During the first couple weeks I threatened to get rid of them while G insisted the boys would be heartbroken.  Then for the next couple weeks G threatened to get rid of them while I insisted the boys would be heartbroken.  And then for most of the summer, getting rid of the goats was the ultimate consequence of any bad behavior.   All the while I keep asking, why do we have these goats?  To which the answer is usually something along the lines of, "Because we're farmers!" or some excuse that they're making manure to fertilize my garden.

    But, now we've finally accepted that Farmer, Tractor, and Silly are a permanent part of our family and we're making plans to put them to work making the two gallons of milk per week the boys consume.  The first step is to make a goat barn, because their simple goat hut won't be enough to house them this winter, especially at the rate the goats are eating it.  The goat barn design process took several weeks with both G and GD drafting many sketches and researching how big they needed to build it in order for it to also hold a cow in the future.  And a sheep.  And an alpaca.  And while we're at it, let's get a pig too because we really like bacon.

    Of course, there was also the issue of paying for this farm animal palace.  In order to fund this project the three boys sold their Tow Motor that they got for free off Craigslist.  The bonus to that is not only was selling it pure profit, but that that forklift smelled really bad and now it's out of the workshop.

     The boys have been working hard constructing the goat barn and building it has basically been the highlight of GD's life.  I don't think G would say it is anywhere near the highlight of his life, especially the part where we dug 6 holes over 36-inches deep by hand.  There is a lot of love poured into this goat barn.  And a lot of unnecessary nails pounded into it too.