Meet The New Goats

I’m here to tell you, goats are addicting. What started as “long term lawn mowers” has turned into so much more. Goats are seriously the most entertaining critter on our homestead. They jump, play, and get into trouble. While they are not beginner livestock, they are totally worth it. On Sunday we brought 3 more new goats to the homestead.

Bringing New Goats To The Homestead

Bringing new goats the homestead can be a stressful event. It’s not just getting them and bringing them home that can be an undertaking. In fact, getting them loaded up and to the homestead is sometimes the easiest part. Bonding with them, quarantine, and learning them is up there with the hardest parts.

The New Goats

We are slowly but surely working our way into the dairy goat business. In the mean time, we are building our herd with genetics that will make us successful. Crooked Oak Farm of SC hooked us up with two gorgeous doelings and a BIG buck.

Of course within 24 hours of them being on the homestead, they ended up ingesting mountain laurel and we had to bring them into the living room to nurse them through it. I swear, if it’s not one thing it’s another with these animals. But we got them through it and they are in their respective pens.

Spike is our new buck. We decided that we wanted to have the ability to retain doelings that caught our fancy. The problem is that I can’t breed the doe back to her father. I mean I could, but the chances of there being problems is high and I don’t want that.

Jade and Sapphire are our 8 week old, blue eyed doelings. They are adorable and full of piss and vinegar which I love. The first night we had them, they screamed the entire night because they wanted their momma back. The second night they were in my living room fighting off toxemia. The third night they were back to screaming their heads off. My poor neighbors must hate us.

The best part of the last four days is that Champ had her baby! So I ran a pool for how many she would have. I got guesses all over as well as different dates. Since she decided it kid a full week after her due date, the dates didn’t matter. But I guessed that she would have three babies and she did! Unfortunately, only one of them lived. We are not 100% the cause but we have our suspicions. But Stella was born and started screaming at me within about 10 seconds.

Champ is seriously the best momma. I was concerned at first because Champ didn’t seem to want anything to do with Stella, but over the last several days she has really become an awesome momma. Stella has blue eyes like her momma and I am absolutely thrilled to have her.

We are still on baby watch for Bella but she isn’t showing any signs of having those babies so I guess we’ll see what she does over the next week or so. We also think that Bailey and Oakley may be pregnant which would be awesome since they are just now big enough that I’m not super worried about the kidding.

So that brings our count to nine goats…. I think.

Update: Bella had her baby

Bella gave us a cute little buckling that we named BeBe (Bella’s Baby). He was retained for meat. Over the last couple years since the original post, she has given us a total of 4 gorgeous babies that all look exactly like her… Except Maverick, he doesn’t look much like her but he’s equally adorable.

Stella is doing amazing and has grown into a really beautiful goat and good mama too. She gave us two doelings that were absolutely adorable! Unfortunately, the were born in June and didn’t make it through our summer and parasite loads, despite throwing everything we had at them.

Bringing New Goats To The Homestead

This year, 2024, we had plans to bring new meat goats to the homestead. But we decided to switch gears and work on our pastures instead. That means that we are potentially holding off on new goats until our pastures are better equipped to handle them.

My hope is that by the end of 2024, we will have a flourishing herd of hardy, milk and meat goats.

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