Life on a smallholding: The goats arrive!

So the chickens had arrived!

I got to to thinking again...Oh dear...groaned my partner..... Goats Hun, what about getting a goat or two?...

after much persuading, I sourced a goat from a friend of ours, a British Saanen called Rita, and told my partner, that as we have a goat arriving we had better start building a pen out of pallets. The blue air in the barn was lifted when the pen was finish, and we could both relax and wait....we were due to collect her the following weekend....The journey to my friends, to collect the goat, was uneventful, apart from the fact that i casually dropped in the fact that we couldn't just have one goat, other wise Rita will start to think she is human and attach herself to one of us!...with that thought planted in his mind, I went quiet for the rest of the journey.

So Rita arrived! ...she was a big goat! and my partner was still a bit nervous of her...he said her eyes looked evil LOL but she turned out to be very affectionate...It took her a little while to settle in...and i guess she saw me as head goat for a while. but she seemed happy none the less...although she was lonely...so while i was clearing out the walled garden of beautiful, but poisonous (for goats) plants,.... i had a cunning plan!!

Knowing how nervous my partner was with goats in the first place, and throwing him in the deep end already with Rita... I thought of a way where I could get another goat to keep Rita company! (hehehe)...so i said to (convo went something like this) "honey we need another goat!" "why, am nervous with one! let alone two" "but that's the whole point...goats are herd animals..and she needs company, otherwise she will follow you around and that will include indoors...with another goat she wont, also if we get a different breed, we can have one for milk and one for the hair!"

So then We ended up with Daisy! the angora....great !......or was it Rita wasn't happy with daisy in her pen...or with us being near daisy!!...soooo

This is Daisy...goat number two!

I started to build another pen attached to Rita's.....only problem was that Rita thought she was missing out...and would jump into Daisy's pen...the bulling would start...we would go into the barn to find both out of the pens and eating the food!!!

Pen was built higher!!....but daisy found a way of escaping out of the gate!!...so gate was rebuilt!! when they finally were sorted in their pens...it was the paddocks we had trouble with!

Originally we put both daisy and Rita into the walled garden...now paddock....and both were happy...for a week!!! Rita decided to jump the gate! which i still find daft because if she had gone round the corner she would see the little bit of fencing was a lot lower!!. But no, Rita would jump the gate every time we put her in this paddock!! leaving Daisy to bleat her heart out while Rita went home to the barn!!

And every day we would try and get Rita back in the paddock without letting Daisy escape! this would be an ongoing saga! until my partner found in other paddock that we had a bit of corrugated tin...not a lot mind...but enough to make the gate from 4 feet high to 5 and half feet high...yippee i though..... how daft was i!! they were in the paddock as normal...my partner had just finished putting the iron on the gate...and as he turned back to walk away.....there was a thud and he turned to see Rita following him!! Grrrr back to the drawing board!! We cleared the second paddock from anything poisonous from them.... built a shelter in there......fixed the old electric fencing....checked the other bit of fencing...and when we were both happy...we put in the goats! first Rita....she went in and was happy to walk of in the paddock....we shut the gate and went to the barn to get Daisy.....once inside the barn we opened Daisy's pen...turned to get her out and came face to face with ..............RITA!!!!...she had jumped!! ..... now we had two goats outside the pen and paddock!! both very stubborn minded!! But I was more stubborn than both! and we put daisy in paddock first....shut the gate...went and got Rita....came back to paddock with her opened gate and put Rita in as Daisy shot through her legs, and ran down the lane!!!!....so i ran down the lane after her.....and when i caught her and turned to walk back up the lane......there was Rita....right behind me!!! both went back into their pens in the barn to try again another time!!

So now we have reached February...life on the small holding was calmer, the goats finally settled into the fact they were going in that paddock whether they liked it or not!....apart from that we lost two hens to marek's and a cockerel had a bad cyst on his leg, so my partner did the humane thing for him too....but all in all things seemed ok

It was now march...and Daisy however had seemed to of developed a cough...It didn't help that Daisy had had a few bouts with Rita a few days before....and so we called in our vet who gave her a jab to help the bruising etc and said she will be fine...she wasn't...so we called out our vet again....the coughing and heaving got worse... took her some greens and she stretched her neck up to eat but that was it ...tried to put it just out of reach to make her stand...but she refused!!she wouldn't stand....and wouldn't eat....so we arranged for a completely different vet to arrive..By now we were in the later half of march!

The new vet said she would be over on the 27th...two days away...that's ok... we were sure Daisy would be fine for then...and we went to bed

The next morning, my partner came rushing into the house all excited!! ............ "We have three goats!!!".... "Don't be silly!" i said ...."go back and count again!!"....no honestly...we do we have three goats......Daisy had had a baby!"

Meet goat number three!!

Banjo!..born 26th march 9.55am...this is him a lot bigger now, but he again is lovely!