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After spending 40 years being a professional Dressage trainer, I sold my indoor riding stable, in an attempt to slow down and enjoy some quiet times!
I purchased a small farm and built it up to house my horse, "Laurentino", and my dogs and cats. All it needed was some wonderful goats!.. So, I chose to raise Pygmy goats, and have collected a wonderful group of does, as well as seven handsome, well bred bucks.
The Pygmy goat is a small goat and is considered to be both a meat and a dairy goat. They are very intelligent. Each one has a definite personality and the herd dynamic is quite amazing!
They make good Mothers, and kidding is very often done in the middle of the day! (A wonderful thing after foaling out horses in the middle of the night for so many years!) A goats gestation period is five months, and kids can be weaned at 10 weeks. The does prefer to come into season as a herd, and will do so every month until bred. (Also very handy from a management perspective).
Even though I am a small woman, I can easily manage to worm, inoculate, trim, and move the entire herd . A Shetland sheepdog and two Shepard/Chow crosses help with the herding and sorting, so it is an easy job for a person of limited physical strength. One can have several dozen goats on just a couple of acres, and they get more nutrition from weeds than from grass!
I sell kids for pets, shows, and for breeding stock. But even though my accountant likes the numbers….I like the goats...they are a peaceful but amusing animal, and I have to admit to spending way too much time just sitting in the goat yard watching them!
So, why the heck am I raising goats??? Well, it depends upon who is asking!
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