When I was about 9 we moved from North Carolina to Missouri...18.6 acres of middle of nowhere Missouri. Back in NC we'd had 5 acres, alot of chickens, a couple of horses (I still miss Bill our old paint), and a couple of pygmy goats. Where the horses found new pastures to roam and didn't make the move with us, all of the rest of the livestock did. We had more room now, and Dad wanted to get a cow or two...but Mom wasn't quite ready for that...so I'm guessing (and again..I was much younger so bear with me) after we lived in MO for a year or so (I know Mom will correct me on the timeline) we got more goats. Specifically we got dairy goats.
It started with two buck bottle babies. (Buck, for those of you who don't speak animal is male) Two babies..and two different breeds...Sundancer (not sure why we named him that) was an Alpine (they have ears that stick up like rabbits), and Miguel de Cervantes was a Lamancha (they have little ears that either lay flat against their heads 'gopher', or stick out just a little 'elfen').
So let's see...I'm 10 (or so)..and my Mom gives a cute wittle baby goat a name like Miguel de Cervantes. She explained he (the character she named him after) was the "Man of Lamancha"..to this day I'm not sure if that was a book or a movie...I might want to google that. Anyway, the little fella didn't get called by his full name....he reminded one of us of a monkey...so even though his "real" name was quite the mouthful we called him Monkey-face.
We added more to our goat family and we milked our dairy goats for a good 5 years I guess. It was a theme that all registerable Bucks we'd name after Mormon prophets, and all non we'd name after different kinds of monkeys. My own goat, my favorite to this day, was my own bottle baby named Howler.
Mom and Dad got out of the dairy goat business a few years back. Dad finally got his cows and between tending to them and trying to keep the goats trained to milk it just became too much, and the last of the ragtag group of goats were sold at the sale. The ones that meant the most (Monkeyface, Sundancer, and some of our favorite does) are en-tombed in the field.
With Madelyn here, my Mom and I had talked about maybe getting some more goats for the farm and starting to milk again. I always LOVED drinking goats milk (Nubian-they have long floppy ears- preferably, although I could tell you at one point which breed gave what milk, and even which GOAT gave what milk) and the fresh cheese we'd make (which tastes NOTHING like commercial goat cheese, which I can't stand). Where Dad and I always favored the Nubians b/c we thought they were the prettiest and easiest to milk, Mom prefered Lamanchas for their personalities. So I'd been keeping my eyes open the past few months to see if we could find something that would fit...
The other day I found an add for a Lamancha Buck baby...and we went and picked him up.
Let me introduce you to Boon (short for Baboon)! He's the newest member of the farm family! Mom and Dad are bottle raising him in the house (like we've done countless times). He's such a fun little fellow, and Madelyn already loves him!
Welcome to the family Boon!
2 comments:
OMG that's so cool!! So...will you ever eat the goat? Or will it be a pet and just for milking?
Nope, he's not for eatin'! we'll eventually get him some girlfriends, and start milking again. :)
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