Goat! Another one!

Here's the newest addition to our Farm! Our new little girly milker goat. We had to get her so she would be a friend for our first goat, Ester (she is the brown and white one--a Nubian/Alpine cross--both great milking breeds). We bought Ester from our neighbor, George, who advised us not to get another goat because then she wouldn't be as good as a pet for the kids (atleast that was what I was gathering from our spanish conversation!) And true she was a sweet pet, but goats are herd animals and they need friends. Everytime we'd take 10 steps away from her she would start bleeting like crazy! So we had to get this new little goat. She is a La Mancha/Boer cross. La Mancha's are the only native goat to America and they look really weird because they have no ears--well they have ears but it just looks like they don't. Boers are great meat eating goats--so she should be the best of both worlds.
When I realized I needed another goat I almost drove to an auction because I knew I could get one cheap--but really auctions are terrible places to purchase livestock because you can't see the goat very well and don't really get to check them out or see their parents, etc.
So instead I headed over to a farm in about an hour away to look at some Miniature La Mancha's and Pygmy Dwarf goats. They are obviously smaller goats but really the full grown ones are as big as my dog so they are not as quite as small as I thought they'd be. She wanted to sell me a registered la mancha mama and her two mix breed babies for $250---wow! Wow meaning that is A LOT of money. I said yes. She went inside to get the paperwork. Then I reconsidered. Yeah the mom was registered (meaning she has paperwork from some national organization verifying she is a purebread and if I got a registered buck later on I could breed registered doe babies and sell them at registered prices...but do I really want to become a miniature la mancha breeder!? That was a resounding no! I didn't like her apricot coloring and she had no ears! (my new goat at least has some little ones--this goats were barely there). I don't like the no ears look--it's weird. So without the pressure of the saleswoman there I reconsidered. Yeah I'd have milk right now and two more doe babies to get milk from later on...but these were show goats with hefty price tags. I'm not interested in showing goats. I just want milk and a maintenance free lawn mower and weed eater :) I realized I was better going back to where I came from and buying my goats from my neighbors. When she came back out I profusely apologized and told her I really ought to discuss such a large purchase with my husband first. She was really mad at me. She showed me the paper work in this plastic envelope thing and said, "I already filled out the registration transfer paperwork." She didn't have my name or address so it's not like she already wrote my name on there! At worst she might have put the date...I just apologized again and she told me how it was going to cost her money to have to get a new paper from the registration organization. I felt so awful--I almost started crying! I offered to give her the money for the cost of getting a new paper (how was I supposed to know she was going to go inside and start filling out the paperwork?) She refused and I tried to leave as quickly as possible but of course my kids are walking so slow and my son is stopping to pick up her rocks. I was so embarrassed. What a waste of a long drive...and kind of a bad experience!
And then I realized I should try getting a goat from Maria "the goat lady". She lives in our town and has gained the reputation of being "the goat lady." She was really nice and sold me our new goat for $60. We got Ester from George for $45, but then again, she was younger then.
Both my does were born in December. So they are a perfect match!! (not to mention the perfect price!)
And I am happy to say that they are happy friends. As soon as I put the new goat in there Esther wagged her little tail (I've been observing them and I think they wag their tails like dogs do to express emotion).
The only thing I have to deal with now is dehorning the new one. It should have been done with a hot iron when she was a week old but Maria lets her goats have horns. I think that really is ideal, I read on a yahoo post that apart from defense they also use horns to regulate body temperature, but when the goat is going to be a milking goat, or a pet goat, especially with kids--that is just too dangerous. Even if the goat doesn't mean to, and she's just moving her head to get a fly off, someone could get seriously hurt. Her horns will eventually curl around and make a half circle (I know many of you are thinking, "I thought only male goats (bucks) had horns?" Well I thought that too. Actually that is not the case. Goats that genetically don't have horns (like Ester) are called "polled" goats and breeding polled with polled can cause genetic abnormalities in the offspring.)
So anyway, to dehorn my 3 month old goat I am going to try using rubberbands. The special rubber bands are placed at the base of the horn and then they restrict the blood flow to the horn and cause it to atrophy and fall off. Dehorning is a horrible process and this is the best way I can see to do it. Here is a REALLY good website with pictures for the dehorning/rubberband method: http://www.greatgoats.com/articles/dehorning.html


You can also see our new "cage" for the goats--remember Ester escaped? Well this was the answer to that-- we bought this little dog coop thing on craigslist for $50 (He wanted $60 but I talked him down $10 because he was playing guitar with his friends so we had to wait in his drive way for a really long time and we drove an hour to come get this and not to mention it was 2 feet smaller on each side than advertised....that's craigslist for 'ya) The height is about 4 ft tall but Ester showed us she can easily jump over! So we had to fence the top too!
And my DH was really smart and made a hay holder--the baby goats like to eat the leaves out of the alfalfa hay but it gets everywhere so DH stuck some metal rods (rebar? rebarb? Rhubarb? LOL I don't know what the name of those things are :) through the chainlink and it held the flake in place. Otherwise they step all over it and it becomes a real mess. The feeders designed to do what DH accomplished with the metal rods cost around $100 or so)
I realize it is a little on the small side, but next month we plan on buying some 6 ft tall no climb fence to make a little pasture for them. I really hate having my animals fenced in, but atleast this is a moveable fence so we can move their pen like the chickens to new weeds. They really do eat the entire weed. SO cool.
Goats are really smart and capable of doing a lot. Ester has even managed to stand on the top of the rounded dog igloo--she has hooves! Imagine doing that with hooves--there is no grip on the bottom of those! It's funny--she gets up there and then it becomes a balancing act (it reminds me of Bambi trying to stand on the frozen lake!) her hooves are going everywhere but then she gets her weight balanced and she can stand up there. She gets up there and then wags her little tail almost like she is saying "hurray, I did it!"
I'm loving my goats! What fun pets! I highly reccomend them. Esther is a sweet friendly little goat but the other one is skiddish. Although Ester was pretty skiddish at first too-she did run away!-hopefully the other one (no name yet!) will like us too and be friendly. Although...I don't know if she'll like us too much after the whole horn removal process! Hopefully goats don't hold grudges :)