Rammy was our first. In August of 2003. we had moved into our house in June, and I wanted goats and chickens ... and who knew what else. We had an acre field, and it had a pole barn down there.
Scanning the livestock ads, I came across one for a 3 week old Nubian. When we got to see him, he was still basically newborn size, as he had been a tiny baby and not expected to live.
Even a couple of months later, he was till dwarfed by the tiger lilies down the side of our driveway.
We did everything wrong with Rammy. They warn you not to treat baby goats like a puppy ... hubby did! I kept telling him not to, but to no avail. Unfortunately, what is fun and cute when they are 18" or so at the shoulder, is not quite so easy to deal with when they are 4 feet at that same point.
Rammy would treat us like another goat. The way they rear up and butt heads, he would rear up and bring his head down and "butt" our outstretched hand. Had he not have been so mild-mannered, that could have been dangerous, but - although mischievous - Rammy was not out to hurt he just wanted to play.
For the first couple of months, he stayed inside. I put a large dog pen in our laundry room (along with all the foster kittens we had at that time, for a local rescue), and bedded it with hay, and he slept in there overnight. Daytimes he just pranced around the yard while we did whatever.
Goats are societal creatures though, so we wanted a friend and mate for him, and found a 4 month old doeling who we named Cleo.
With having the 2, hubby made 2 separate stalls in the pole barn, and we put mesh at the bottom so that they could "see" each other even having their own sleeping space. Thus Rammy moved out of his little sleeping pen in the laundry room and down into the barn, into his own stall.
In January 2004, just before a snowstorm hit, I ended up with Red and Sadie. I had been trying to help another lady with her young goats and it wasn't going well. I already had some health issues, as did she, but she was neither any worse, nor better, than I, despite her always moaning about being a "poor disabled lady". As I came to find out later, she was a scammer, sadly.
She was very demanding. She had told me I needed to come and help more, and I had explained that working, having my own animals to take care of, and a hubby to get dinner ready for, I could not come every day, I could do maybe 3 times a week. Her goats were sick, they were very wild compared to Rammy and Cleo, very timid and hard to catch in order to give shots and medicate. I felt sorry for them but had my own to care for. She started saying I should take them to mine so I could get them better for her, but I didn't want to get my 2 sick, and I only had the 2 stalls. Things came to a head, with her calling me one evening to say she was giving me the goats as she couldn't care for them any more. I told her, I still couldn't bring them to mine until they were well. Suffice to say, she called the next night and said "oh you need to come over and feed YOUR GOATS". I was horrified, and I said to Mark, "she's not going to feed or water them. She'll let them starve if I don't go over every day and feed them". He said, "we'll have to go over and get them", so I called her back and said that we were coming to get them.
We had a larger pen, that we set on the back of the pick up truck, and put blankets over to try to cut down on draughts as we travelled. We got home about 10pm, the snow was starting to fall, and I bundled Rammy and Cleo together, so that I could put Red and Sadie in the other stall. Unfortunately the mesh at the bottom meant that I ended up with 4 sick goats, and within days had become very proficient in administering Nasalgen, Nutridrench and giving shots.
They were both so timid at first, and being so mistreated by my efforts to get them well, didn't help in taming them at all. For a few weeks, we would put them on a leash in their stall and bring them out on it so that they couldn't just run off, because even "just" a one acre field is plenty big enough for them to elude 2 humans attempting to catch them.
Once well, despite remaining somewhat skittish, they adjusted and bonded with Rammy and Cleo. The girls hung out and the boys would play and butt heads and such.
Red's hoofs were a major issue. He had had a broken ankle a a baby, and his hoofs grew uneven and constantly needed trimming. He was such a gentle soul though, such a good boy and put up with it, although you could tell he hated having it done.
We lost him first, when he was 11, and then Rammy a few months later. Cleo had a prolapse when she was 13, and had to be put down, and Sadie left us last month.
Cleo had always been a brash, bossy and obstinate girl, whose 'bull in a china shop" approach went with a nosy nature and way-too-healthy appetite. She would ram the others to get her head in their food pans while leaving her own, or after having eaten all of hers. She was a greedy little moo!
I'd mix beet pulp, alfalfa, mixed grain and pellets for them, they'd have carrots and apples, persimmons off the tree in the field. The vet came out one time to do CAE testing and laughed, he said he'd never seen such pampered goats!
Cleo was a lover, too, though. In Summer, I'd sit down the field on the box that Sadie is standing on, in the pic, and Cleo would stand behind me and rest her head on my shoulder for me to rub her face and ears.
After Cleo's loss, Sadie took to hanging out up in the front yard, with our dogs. It was quite odd, if she was out alone, she acted like a goat, just strolled around (sometimes with the last chicken, riding on her back) but if she was out with our 4 dogs, she was a part of the pack and acted like a dog, running with them.
She knew the sound of our vehicle and, as we pulled up to the gate, she would come to greet up; hubby joked about us having to pay a toll, to get in. We would buy her french fries as her "treat".
They may be gone now, but we remember them all fondly. Their personalities, and our memories of them, are etched in our minds forever
