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Do goats make good pets?
Goats make the perfect pet!
But, not if you are looking for a pet that will obey a command! fetch the paper, or learn tricks!
Or looking for a pet that sleeps all day, uses a litterbox, and is very quiet!
If your looking for a pet that ignores you unless you have food, cannot be housetrained, and eats your garden , then a goat is the perfect pet!
Goats really do make great pets! but you have to interact with them all the time. Goats are very scared around people if they do not get regular attention from them. Goats will behave very much like a dog if you bottlefeed them, and walk them on a leash starting as a baby! You become their "mother" and goats are very attached to their mother! They always come when their mother calls to them. It is possible to house train them a little,we had to do that when we bottlefed a baby during winter, and she had to live in the house! But soon she started to forget, and had some accidents! The best goat to get if you are considering getting a goat for a pet is a baby. If possible, a girl! If you have to get a male, make sure you have him wethered! (castrated) Males just can't help being a "goat"! Make sure you give it lots of attention so it won't be afraid of you! Hold them all the time!
You'll see! Goats make the perfect pet! . Maggie and her daughter Rosemary are out in the field looking for their favorite weeds! Maggie is the sweetest goat we have (bottlefed too) but her daughter Rosemary-not bottlefed- is the worst behaved goat we have! She can jump to the top of a round bail of hay! Jump over a 5 foot high fence! and escape any pen she is put in! We have learned that some goats must just be born that way! Because she didn't learn it from her mother!
Rosemary and Fern are good jumpers, they can jump to the
top of the new bails. Several other goats love to nap on bails in the evening sunset!
This is Francis laying right in the middle of the hay, her
favorite place to be! She would take up the whole bail, and not let anybody else near! Everybody knows to keep their distance
too! Francis is the queen, and everybody knows it!
even though scarlet is not a tiny baby she still loves her
bottle
This summer heat really makes the goats wish for fall and winter! Well, not snow, though!
After the wagon is emptied of its hay, the goats love to
jump in and find every last crumb!
Maryann was born april 2009, her mother is Nellie,our
very first goat. Nellie can not keep her babies because she has had several cases of mastitis in her udder, so every
time she has a baby we get to keep it! She did get to keep her first two babies, which were twin girls. So far Nellie has had 11 babies, This is Maryann at just a few minutes old!
Even though the snow is beautiful, the goats don't enjoy
it! The only reason they are out in the field in this picture is that they followed us! As soon as they realized we didn't
have food, they hurried back to their goat house!
Oliver is only 3 months old, and already copies the big goats!
They love to climb and jump on everything, especially the red truck!
Rose is cleaning her newborn baby, Simon. We were surprised
when 2 hours went by and she had another baby! Usually the second baby is born quickly after the first. Timothy is the second
boy.
Simon and Timothy wait with Samuel while their mother, Rose
is out in the field eating.
Ginger just gave birth to twin boys- Jacob and Joshua. Ginger
is Nellie's first daughter. Ginger is a wonderful mother!
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Goats Eating Habits-Will they
eat anything? Many people think that goats will eat anything. This is just not true. Goats are actually picky eaters! They
know what they like and dislike. They usually learn their eating habits from their
mother. Our goats love clover, especially the flowers. Another
favorite is blackberry or raspberry bushes! Our goats do like to eat the bark off of some trees-usually Pine or Maple
trees, to reach the yummy sap under it! Poison ivy is
also a favorite, and i have never seen them get a reaction to it like we do! They dont eat metal, rubber, vinyl siding, plastic, etc. They will
"mouth" it and taste it but usually lose interest and spit it back out. Goats eating habits are very interesting to observe sometimes, we have
seen some odd things being eaten on occasion, such as a crayon, a broom-of course it was a real corn broom-what were we thinking
to leave it on the patio! a wicker basket got partially eaten, paper, cardboard boxes are a favorite thing to nibble on if
it is set outside, and of course the babies love to chew on our shoelaces! So, even though goats won't just eat everything, they just might taste
anything!
How do goats survive the summer heat? Goats need a lot of LOVE in the summer! The summer in the south can be very hard on animals. The most important thing to remember about goats in the summer is WATER! Water is very essential for goats, and many times gets overlooked. Fresh, clean, cool water is very important. Change their water several times a day to prevent it from getting too hot or dirty . Goats need 1 to 3 gallons of water daily, give or take a little. If goats are eating green chop in the summer, they require less water, as water is contained in the plant. SHADE- Make sure your goats have access to shade! This summer heat can easily overheat your goat! Put their water in the shade as much as possible also. MINERALS- Goats need access to a trace mineral block or free choice type of minerals. Keep baking soda available, goats will self regulate how much they eat. They may eat around 2 tablespoons a day.
It
is more practical for goats to have free choice minerals, but can you make the goats understand that? We keep a mineral block
for the cow, and of course most of it gets licked by the goats!
The whole field is blooming with yellow flowers! It is so
beautiful! I just love to take pictures of the goats in the field! I dont know what kind of flowers they are, and the goats,
horses and cow do not eat them! In this picture they are resting on the big rock in the shade.
The tractor came to cut the hay, and as soon as he got to
the back side of the field the goats hurried over to start eating! But when he got back to the front where they were, they
would run out of the field! And go back in as soon as he made it around to the back side again! this went on the whole time
until they bailed it up and it was all gone!
Ruby is very affectionate, she is nibbling on her son Max's
ear as they rest in the afternoon sun! and he loves it! After sunning themselves, they decide to take a nap together!
Clover is the granddaughter of Nellie. She had a little girl
- we named her Lilly. When Lilly was a week old she followed her mother along with the rest of the group down in the woods
by a small stream. Everybody soon went on to other areas and Lilly got left behind! Clover and all of us looked for her for
the whole day. She was nowhere to be found! After dark I went back out with a powerful spotlight hoping to see her eyes in
the light! Clover was still calling out to her in vain. She had been missing now since around noon! After looking for about
30 minutes with my light, I heard Clover suddenly call out frantically and start running down the hill! I knew she must have
heard her! I ran after her and soon heard a small cry deep in the woods! Clover stopped about 30 feet away, she was afraid
of the woods in the dark, so I went in by myself. Lilly was down in the stream standing on a rock! She was soaked and shivering,
but O.K. I jumped down in and got her and carried her up to her mama! Clover kept a close eye on her from then on!
Simon is grown now, and he is one of the quietest goats we
have. Some of the goats call out loudly and make themselves heard! But Simon keeps to himself, and never calls out. He just
follows the rest, and behaves himself. His twin brother Timothy is just the opposite! He is always escaping and misbehaving!
Pepper is 2 years old and finally had her first baby, a boy! we named him alexander. He is a very shy, sweet natured goat, just like his mama!
Leroy is a big husky baby! You can just tell he has the genes of the Nubians! His mother is very big for a Kinder too. |
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Lucy is a Kinder Goat Lucy's mother was a full pygmy and her father was a full nubian. She was the first baby born from the pure bread pygmy-nubians. She had giant ears that were straight! She looked very exotic.At a year old she had her first baby-Fern. 11 days later she died from infection. what a heartbreak! we had to start bottlefeeding Fern at 11 days! She did well, though and lived in the house with us, because we couldn't bear to leave her outside with the other goats without her mama!
Francis is our smallest pure Pygmy. She was one of the 3 original
Pygmies bred with the nubian. She gave birth to twins-this is her son Henry, he is about a year old here. He is SO much bigger
than her! She is the most loving goat we have! She is always rubbing on him like in the photo!
Barney is one of the best examples of a kinder
goat, he has giant ears like a nubian, but they are straight like a pygmy! And he
was our second bottle-fed baby. He was a twin, and his twin brother Stanley weighed 7 pounds and Barney weighed only 2 pounds!
He could not even reach his mother's udders! And Stanley just pushed him out of the way anyway! So immediately we knew he
had to be taken care of by us! Fern, our only other bottlefed baby at the time, was very jealous of him! We learned that even
goats can be jealous of a new baby! She would bite him, and push on him! Now they are both grown, and they have grown very
close and actually still play with each other!
Another goat with large straight ears is Ivy! Ivy is one of our bottlefed babies-her mother was Ruby. Ruby was such a wonderful mother to Max, but when she gave birth to twin girls, she rejected them and ran from them! She didnt want to be near them! She kept running back to Max, and wouldn't even let them nurse!
Emily just loves the wheelbarrow! We have to tip it over on it's side or she will jump into it and tip it over! When it is tipped on it's side, she wants to lay in it and sun herself! Just look for the wheelbarrow and you will find Emily!
Even when the food is plentiful, the goats
are picky about their weeds! They do not just eat everything in sight! Ivy is wading through a lot of "food" to
find just the right weed!
fern
and luke rest in the evening sun
We have a fallen tree in the goat's field.
It is the funnest part of their day to walk as high as they can up the tree! Betsy likes to walk very high!
Daniel, at just one day old, can hardly
stay awake in the warm sunshine!
Daniel is
grown now and Fern has had another baby, but they stilll love each other!
Goat of the Week The goat of the week is Nelly!
Nelly was our very first goat. She is a Nubian. We got her over 6 years ago when she was 6 weeks old. We had a small pen for her next to our rooster pen. Every night she would sleep up against his side to be close to him. It didn't take long before she squeezed under the fence! One morning we went out early and found her sleeping right next to him IN his pen! He didn't mind a bit! We got her back to her side, but every night from then on she squeezed under to sleep with him. As she got bigger we had to make her a bigger pen and eventually just let her roam freely around the yard. We started getting more goats, and when she was a year old she had her first babies, two girls. Ginger and Olive. Over the years, Nellie has had 11 babies. She is our oldest goat, but she is still very healthy. Well, it's not quite spring yet, but our mama's are starting to babies! Fern just gave birth to a baby girl! Her first daughter! We named her Lucy, after Fern's mother, which died when Fern was 11 days old. She is spotted too! Our first spotted goat!
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