Riding in Cars With Goats

Today my mother and I drove about two and a half hours to go pick up my two new Nigerian Dwarf does, Sahara and Harmony. We rolled on up out of here at 6:30 a.m., so that aptly expresses my excitement. I don't get up that early for just anything. When we arrived at Laurel Haven their breeder, Tina, had already separated the girls from the rest of the herd. They came right up to the fence and stuck their noses through to sniff us and were very friendly. This is a picture of Sahara looking adorably up at me. Tina gave us a tour of her operation and we got to meet all of her other goats, even a little 4 week old baby that was just about the cutest little thing I've ever seen in person. The amazing thing is, he was already about twice as big as when he was born! They are only about 2 lbs at birth. I took a video of him nursing, but its hard to get perspective on how truly tiny he is.


When it came time to leave, we put my two new goats in the back of my little brother, Geno's, Jeep he was so kind to let me borrow. Mom assures me he had full disclosure of our plans to transport goats in it, so I'm going to go with that. When we first put them in the Jeep and started moving, all hell broke loose. Harmony and Sahara both started bleating at the top of their lungs. Harmony has a bit of a hysterical screechy bleat, while Sahara....what can I really say about Sahara's sound other than it is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever heard? The first time you hear it you're a little shocked and more than a little embarrassed for her. Here's a video taken 30 seconds after we started rolling away from Laurel Haven. You can barely hear me and mom giggling in the background over the screams.


By the time we got on the interstate they had settled down and Harmony even spent a good part of the trip lying down. Although goat pellets made an appearance almost immediately, they both held their bladders as long as they could and didn't actually pee until we'd been on the road a little over an hour and a half. I had never realized how much a Jeep Cherokee is like driving a glass box: the entire thing is nothing but windows. There is no blind spot in a Jeep, and this made it fun to gauge people's reaction in traffic. More than once a car would pass us and we'd be greeted with the sight of a car full of happy smiling faces beaming back at us. Apparently seeing goats in unexpected places can really brighten a person's day. Then again, we had a few people who'd drive by us with a completely confused look on their face, more often then not slowly shaking their head from side to side. At one point we stopped at a gas station to get some lunch and gas up. While Mom was in getting our sandwiches, and I was pumping the gas, the woman getting gas behind us came up and wanted to pet my goats. She crawled up in the front seat and was oohing and ahhing over them and asking what one owns a goat for. Give me one reason NOT to own a goat, I say!

As were were eating our Subway sandwiches, my mother discovered that they like Fritos. After that, eating our lunch in peace proved interesting! She'll probably kill me for posting these pictures, but I love the progression.




























When we got home Dustin's cousin, Jesse, a fairly regular installment here at the farm, carried Harmony to the goat pen and put her down. She immediately took off running in the back pasture looking for her mom, Sahara, who had meanwhile escaped Dustin's clutches and was running around inside our thankfully fenced-in yard. Here's a video of that.

When we were finally able to get both of them into the goat pen, it was complete chaos. Ayden, who was overdue for a nap and a bit over excited by the whole thing, was as hysterical as the new goats and being equally loud. Sahara and Harmony are bleating as loudly as possible, and apparently the electric fence was out so Sahara kept trying to go back through the pallet we're currently using for a make-shift gate and getting her head stuck in it. Once we got her away from that, I turned around to see Sahara being head-butted by Tierra right in her belly. Ahhhh! I pushed Tierra away and gave her a stern NO, just to see her rear up on her hind legs toward Sahara like you see on the Nature of Omaha video's of 500 lb ram's who run at each other on their hind legs then slam their heads together. Picture it in your mind as something like this picture, but with an evil glint in her eye and a huge pregnant belly. He he. I thought to myself, "I don't think so!" and pushed her off to the side, thus thwarting her mighty butting action. After that we locked the new goats out in the back pasture so they could all get to know each other through the fence for a while. Live and learn. Of course at this point Ayden would decide to reduce himself to screaming hysterics on the ground because Dustin was trying to take him back to the house for a nap. Then, for extra fun, it started raining. Could this possibly get any worse? So now my two new pregnant does are stuck out in the back pasture with no shelter. This is not the warm home-coming I had imagined for them. Mom, Jesse, and I comenced running about scavenging materials to throw up some impromptu shelter for the new girls. We were able rig up an an old dog crate back there with a shower curtain and old drop clothes draped over it to keep it airtight, with folded up lawn chairs on top to keep it from blowing away. Thankfully the girls eventually decided to take shelter in there. For the rest of the evening I was posted at the window keeping an eye on them, with frequent trips out there in the rain to try to make them more comfortable. Tierra meanwhile stood sentry just inside the goat barn with nothing but her neck and head hooked around the side to keep an eye on her new adversaries. Louie and Lucy were mildly interested in the new goats, but thats about as far as their investment in the situation went. I knew they'd be fine with them, but Tierra, who has never had an aggressive bone in her body, was pretty thrilled about being herd queen here for the last few months, even if she only became so out of default cause her only minions were a couple of 50 lb sheep-goat things. So she's had a little time to grow some cojones, and wanted to make a lasting impression on Harmony and Sahara that she had no plans on giving up her title.

A few hours later the gate separating the goat pen from the back pasture blew open, and when Dustin rushed out to shut it, the two new girls had already come into the pen where Tierra and the angoras were. Dustin was right there to referee if needed, but the only thing that happened was he succumbed to a serious head rubbing from Tierra along his hips and thighs. She's been doing this nonstop since the new girls got here, I guess she's marking her territory, so to speak. It actually feels quite nice, she's got a head as hard as a rock and the muscles to go behind it. She could be after MY title as the massage therapist on the farm. She can have it. Anyway, she was quite civil and although she stared them down pretty good, she has not tried to head butt them since, and after that we went ahead and left the gate between them open. Harmony and Sahara have pretty much set up camp down at the far end of the pasture where the dog kennel is, so I'll just leave it there for a couple days and let them adjust at their own rate. More on their assimilation as it progresses.