Goats!

It's been a year on the farm! Our biggest endeavor so far has been raising goats. We'd love to raise our own bacon, eggs, and perhaps milk, but we thought it best to start with one animal at a time. It has been a blast. Since we had a small field that needed cleared, we opted to start with goats.  It has been a blast!

Alpha Bob

And they've done the job well. In just a month, they took our small field from this:

This is actually several weeks in, but the original picture is hiding somewhere. 

to this:

The back section of field slopes downward, where they like to hide and devise ways to reach the creek below.

Care has been relatively simple. We built a simple goat shed, where they sleep at night and hide from the rain. We leave hay, minerals, and baking soda out free-choice, and feed them grain twice a day. We trim their hooves (mani-pedi day) and doctor them when their sick. Otherwise, they're pretty content to ramble and entertain themselves, which is fun to watch. They rarely try to escape, which was a huge concern before we started.

Our goat shed, with mineral and baking soda dispensers.

We brought home 20 baby goats and they quickly grew. Our original plan was to name them after Lord of the Rings characters, but they all insisted their names were Bob. If you try calling them anything else, they'll quickly correct you and say, "BOB!" 

Unicorn Bob 

Eventually, their individual personalities began to shine, and they developed more specialized names: Dumb Bob gets his head stuck in the fence daily. He has a bald patch on the back of his neck from rubbing it on the wire. Drama Bob thinks he's dying if you so much as look at him funny. Pocahontas Bob is graceful and beautiful. Granny Bob is the sweet grandmotherly figure in the bunch. Shawshank Bob...well, you don't want to know. Gross Bob developed a bad case of Orf and looked pretty nasty for a while. He's all healed, but the name stuck. 

The siren call of the grain bucket. They'll follow you anywhere if you carry it.

We thought goats would be a temporary endeavor, but we've all enjoyed having them and will likely make this a permanent plan. Chickens are next on the list!