This is a story about some goats. Some of them will be eaten. If you don't like that idea, then don't read on...
We recently moved to a property that happens to be next door to a goat cheese dairy, and quickly found out that they were about to have a whole lot of baby billy goats born that they didn't have a use for (you can't milk a boy goat). The plight of male billys from goat dairies is another story, and I will give you a link to an interesting article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal about it but not until the end of my tale.
We decided to take on the challenge of raising a few of these boys at our place, the idea being that we would keep two as lawn mowers (we have a LOT of grass), and two would be for meat.
The first hurdle was getting this idea approved by our children, one of whom has been a vegetarian for about 8 years. Initially they didn't like the idea and only wanted the two as pets, but I basically told them we were doing it and they'd have to get used to the idea! Which they did, to their credit.
At least I gave my daughter the choice of which ones would be pets and which would be dinner. She chose the two brown ones as pets, and the (slightly less cute) white ones as dinner. More about that a bit later...
So we went and collected these goats who were about 5-7 days old, and brought them home in a box in the boot of my car, with a small bag of milk powder and basic instructions on how to keep them alive. (I must say here that our neighbours are the most lovely, helpful people. Although they had about 200 babies being born at that time, they still checked in with us and made sure we were doing ok - they really care about their animals).
My first shock was buying the milk powder - $98 for 16kg! That's probably an ok price, but it made me realise these goats were an investment - they'd better be worth it! We also needed to buy little teets that screw onto plastic bottles ($4 each) and fix up a pen for them, but that was about it. We borrowed a 'calfateria' from our neighbours as well but we didn't end up using it.
Things started really well, with at least two of us getting up every morning for their 6am feed. I'm not normally a morning person, but getting up at that hour made a huge difference to the family's day. We started eating porridge together around the kitchen table after feeding, and there was plenty of time for lunch making and talking about school, etc... I was actually in heaven.
That lasted for about 3 or 4 weeks.
Goats are hungry little buggers and I was beginning to wonder when they could move on to solid foods? They were showing an interest in grazing so we let them out under supervision. They stayed pretty close and made us all laugh as they seemed to race each other up and down lane ways on our property, bucking and leaping at odd angles as they went. We found that they got on quite well with our chickens and one of our cats, and so again the sense of domestic bliss was restored.
We went on holiday and had to leave them in the care of our neighbours for a few weeks. This worked out well (another bag of milk powder - our third - and a bag of goat feed later), but when we returned from our trip they had gotten a lot bigger! A bit of flimsy chicken wire and some small sticks was no longer enough to keep them contained and they soon became a nightmare! Escaping, eating our raspberry canes, barging through hedges to get to their favourite plants. I had visions of them running blindly onto the road and causing major accidents. Where were the cute little babies we'd left only a few weeks ago? It was time for a new strategy.
Before we got the goats, I'd read some books and blogs to find out what to do. We were planning to tether the lawn mowing goats, and to do this properly you're supposed to get metal stakes with swivels and proper chain.
I thought I'd try rope for a few days.
That was 6 weeks ago.
I'm still intending to get the proper set up - it just hasn't been a "financial priority" of late. Sorry goats. They actually don't seem to mind.
They've now eaten down most of the blackberry behind the sheds, and are happy to be positioned around the property, grazing away on different leaves and grass. They get tangled from time to time, but we check them often and put them in their pen most nights. I think they're as happy as goats on ropes can be.
The next challenge came when we decided it was time to 'dispatch' of the white ones. Apart from the ick-factor associated with killing an animal that size, we had also come across an unexpected dilemma.
Early on, in about the first or second week, one of the white goats had become ill. It stopped eating, and would just stand or lay in a corner, shivering and getting weaker each day. We rang the neighbours and tried all their suggestions. We brought him up to the house and left him in a box in the porch overnight with a little blanket and some straw. We gave it extra cuddles and talked to it, willing it to get better (even though I'd read that this might not happen).
Stay tuned to see what happened next....
