I’ve been around dairy goats for quite a few years now. Somehow, I’ve always ended up with Nubians. They have their own special (loud) personalities, but I secretly coveted the small, sweet Nigerians I saw everyone had. This fall, I got the opportunity to get some Nigerians that I could use as a test in our dairy. Oh boy, what an adventure. I’ll spare you the details of them breaking out of a chain link fence and eating all the rabbit food. We had finally gotten everything to settle out–or so we thought.
I was out one day feeding the goats and the sheep. I turned around, and there, in front of me, was my black Nigerian doe, Luna. She had a Huge bag (udder). This was a surprise to me because she wasn’t supposed to kid until late January. Well, it didn’t surprise me when 4 days later I was out in the barn and I heard the cries of a newborn goat. I ran out to see that Miss Luna had three little doelings running around demanding to be nursed. One was black, one was white, and one was white-caramel.
The black little goat was smaller than the others, and kept being pushed out of the way when it was time to eat. A day later, she was getting almost nothing to eat, and she was lethargic and no longer had the will to eat. I scooped her up and brought her into the house where Daphne and I worked to get some food into her. Slowly, slowly with lots of breaks for sleeping in the middle, she got a tummy full of milk. I wrapped her up in a towel, put her in a box and carefully placed the box next to the wood stove for warmth.
That’s the story of how we got a house goat. She lived in the house with us over the next week. She went from not being able to stand to running and leaping and jumping and challenging our dog to battles. Daphne even managed to potty train her. She would take her outside and let her pee, and she never once peed in our house. In his excitement, Cyprus started to refer to her as “Dot the Goat” and so we named her Dot.
I had a visitor over looking at buying some wethers that I had, and he inquired about Dot. He had a little girl at home that would love a bottle goat, and he asked if I would consider selling her. She was obviously going to a good home, and because of her runtyness, I had no intention of keeping her as breeding stock. I agreed to let her go.
When Miss Daphne found out that I had sold her goat, boy did I hear about it! I had to spend an entire morning comforting her and convincing her that there were others in the world that needed goats, and that she would be well taken care of. So, when the man came to get precious little Dot, Daphne marched out of the house, handed her over, and slowly, with tears in her eyes, walked back to the house, sad.
When all was said and done, I was asked to always remember Dot because Daphne would always love her! What a lucky little goat to have so much love! Dot has a good home now, and Daphne has taken on the task of managing Dot’s sisters, Milly and Tilly.
