We were driving through a beautiful old neighbourhood, where one of my AVON customers has recently moved to, when I saw a sign about renting goats to clear your yard, and that was all it took. I missed my goats. They all crossed the Rainbow Bridge years ago, but at one time we had four. Rammy, Cleo, Red and Sadie. 4 different personalities. 4 Nubians. I used to love sitting down in the field with them. Cleo would stand behind me on their play box, and rest her head on my shoulder. Rammy would rear up and bring his head down perfectly to touch my outstretched hand, and he was the one with 2 different calls - "maaahh-meee" and "daaad-dee". People didn't believe it, until they'd come over and hear him for themselves.
My goat days began July 19th 2003, when we brought Rammy home. He'd been born in June weighing only 3lbs, and was still needing bottle feeding. He was a darling. He was so little, even then. The tiger lilies were bigger than he was.
On the 13th August we got him a companion.
Our Miss Cleo.
He was our Rameses, to her Cleopatra. She was a darling. She was 4 months old when we got her.
They thrived, and hubby made them separate stalls in the old pole barn, so they had their space, but put wire mesh between at the bottom so that they could see each other and not be lonely overnights when we'd put them to bed. Yeah, we were that kind of goat parents! The vet who came out a few months later, and taught me how to give them their shots, said he'd never seen such pampered goats. LOL.
They were only knee high back then and gambolled about, skipping and bouncing around the yard. It was so sweet watching them, they were so cute.
Being Nubians, they grew fairly quickly and were both very healthy.
In January 2004, we brought Red and Sadie home just as a snowstorm was about to hit. I was still working at the time, and not as disabled as I became 2 years later, and had been trying to help another lady with her 2 goats that were sick. She kept bugging me to come more (I was trying to go there 2-3 times a week) and then started telling me I needed to take the goats to mine so that I could get them well. I said I couldn't do that because of my 2, I didn't want to make them ill.
She called me one day and told me she couldn't handle them any more and that she was giving them to me. I told her they'd still have to stay at hers as they were sick. The next day (with a snowstorm due in that evening) she called me around 7pm and told me I needed to come and feed "my goats". I was horror struck. She wasn't even going to feed them now she had "given" them to me. I told Mark, "ok, we need to go and get these goats", so we loaded up a cage and a tarp to cover it on the journey back, and drove to Fountain Inn to get them. A couple of years later she accused me of stealing them and tried to badmouth me through goat groups that we were both in, but t ended up that I wasn't the first person she'd done the exact same thing to! It was sad. I hadn't realised what a nasty person she really was.
We had just made it home that night (24th January 2004) as the snow started to fall, and it was bitter cold.
Sadie was very skittish, but she loved jumping up on the crate to play. Red had an ankle injury, that resulted in a lifetime of hoof problems, but he was a darling, and a gentle giant. We had Rammy gelded, and Red ended up siring a few babies with both of the girls.
They were all pretty unique. For awhile Cleo used to walk around with one of the chickens on her back, and then, after her death, the chicken would sit on Sadie's back. We lost our boys first, then Cleo, and finally Sadie. When she was the last one left, she'd stay out in the front yard and run with the dogs, and it was funny watching her chasing up to the fence with them, when people walked or rode by.
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