Pygmy Goats

So here they are..... the most worthless pets you could ever have. Well, probably not the most worthless, but they must run a close second. A little background here. For my 35th birthday my husband "surprised" me with pygmy goats. Did I know I was getting goats? No. Did I want goats? No, I wanted drain rock for my patio project. Buy my mother-in-law had drilled into his head that appliances, and large piles of rock, were a bad idea. Apparently farm animals are fair game. Crazy. While unloading this new gift, my dog jumped the fence and scared them. Up the mountain they went. Mother goat and her 4 week old baby. We climbed the mountain, and climbed the mountain again. By nightfall we had captured the baby but the mother goat would stay gone for four days. We did our best. We got fresh goat's milk, and kept her warm and safe. But most of you probably know that a tiny little baby goat really just wants it's mother. Clarabelle, the mother goat, finally and frantically came home just in the nick of time and hasn't left since. Oh yeah, and she can scale a five foot tall fence. But we overfeed them and they stay close.

So occasionally (often) we have a serious lack of judgement and we decided that adding one more to match the age of our now 9 mo. old baby goat, Clementine, would be a very good idea. Did anyone know that goats have a pecking order? I did not. So to make a very long story short, we brought home Ollie, a 9 mo. old whether, who managed to live in our house for a week. Why? Because of that darn pecking order I mentioned. My original goats beat the crap out of him and he screamed like a very upset little baby, but much, much louder. After a week, (he eats library books) he moved to the barn with the others to grow some cajones. Now, that may seem kind of mean to just throw him to the wolves, so to speak, but he loved my husband and tried to eat my everything. He did fine. Now he is just one of the gang. I think we are done acquiring goats for a while, although Doyle is constantly scanning Craigslist showing me how cheap goats are these days. Chickens, I think, shall be my next project.