Goodbye Goats

Our experience with goats here at Windy Creek Farm started before we even lived on this land. We used our brush goats to clear the pasture in order to clear it for planting to grass (and they do love brush), and to keep it clear as the grass grew. Fortunately Unfortunately, it is time for them to go. They have been causing problems and the pasture doesn't really need them anymore. It's not that I have a problem with goats in general, but lately my goats and I just haven't been able to get along.

The goats wander the whole pasture, including the areas where I move the chicken pens. Goats absolutely love chicken feed. This makes chores difficult, because as soon as I set a bucket down there are at least three goat heads stuck into it. They're even rude enough to stick their heads into the buckets while I'm carrying them. Now, that just gets my goat.

Besides that, they are rough on the chicken pens. Goats get itchy, and they love to rub against the chicken wire on the walls of the pens. As a result, the chicken wire often stretches and comes loose, making repairs necessary. Direct assaults have taken place as well; just a few days ago, the goats broke into the hen pen and ate the feed. The chickens got out, of course, and half of them were killed or eaten by an as yet unknown predator. This dropped my egg production from 12 to 4 per day.

Abigail, whom we bottlefed, was terribly spoiled as a child, and she shows it. She should have been named Nellie. She's small enough to jump out of the fence, and just today she found the garden delightful. She nibbled, more or less destructively, on the beans, corn, and lettuce. I'm sure that she will enjoy her new home at Pa Paw's house- he has a great goat fence.

Worms have been a constant worry with goats until this year. We lost all of last year's kid crop to barberpole worms, a particularly virulent type, but this year the goats have stayed healthy. We did lose one goat kid recently; somehow it strayed onto the county road and was run over.

These are the reasons for selling the goats. All of them will be sold as soon as the kids are weaned, except for our milk goats Patty and Dixie, whom I have not yet convinced my mother to sell. With the goats leaving, we plan to replace them with a more polite, refined animal: sheep. I hope they live up to their reputation.