New Family Member

We are pleased to announce a new family member has joined the herd, Athena. She was purchased from a goat farm out of Sonoma, McMini-Akers. She is a little over a year old, and we had her bred before pickup to one of our favorite of her bucks Zephyr. We’re still waiting for confirmation from our vet that the breeding we successfully, but fingers crossed there will be some late fall kids available.

Athena is the first goat we have ever purchased as an adult, and I didn’t know what to expect. I was worried she wouldn’t fit in with our herd. Everyone here is on a routine they know in which order they are feed, I open the gate at night and everyone rushes into the barn for bedtime. It took us months to train everyone on this routine, and it's important, otherwise, we couldn't care of so many animals alone. She had also never been exposed to other livestock, and we run our goats during the day with cattle and swine. I didn’t know how she was going to adjust to all that madness, or how much it was going to throw our routine into a tailspin. Despite all my worries we still got her, she was pretty, and I liked the idea that she was close in age to the rest of our herd.

I drove the two and a half hours to pick her up it was crazy hot outside. I was worried about the wind bothering her if I put her in the back of our truck, so I put her crate in the back seat instead (I made sure not to mention it to my husband until we were already home). The breeder warned me that she can be a loud screamer, and I was worried that it was going to be an awful car ride, but she was perfect didn’t make a peep the whole trip. We introduced her right away to our other goats in the contained barn area, the does avoid each other but came to a quick harmony. Our wether Billy would not leaver her alone, he just kept butting her, so we moved him in with the bucks. I thought it would be a couple of days until she went out to pasture, but the next morning when I opened the gates she ran out with the rest of the girls. They moved in a pack, she avoided the other livestock and ran anytime they even looked in her direction. Eventually, they worked out an acceptable distance, and they all started to graze together. At bedtime, she ran into the gates with the rest of the girls like she had been part of our herd the entire time. Everything just worked, she isn’t as cuddly as my other goats, so we will see how things go when we need to start milking her, but so far I couldn’t be happy with the way she has folded into our lives.