Our friends the Goats

When the children were young my husband took them to a goat farm and got three Nubian goats, one for each. They were all females and the idea was the children could learn some responsibility caring for them.

Before buying the goats we had fence off almost an acre of land and built a nice little barn for them to live in complete with a wood milking stanchion. In the midst of the fenced land was a section of large stumps that had been left when we first built on the land, later they would become a play ground for the goats and children.

When the goats came to our home they were all expecting and soon we had five new kids. The goats of the girls each had given birth to twins which made them very happy as they also are twins. The goats seemed to crave attention and loved it when the children would play with them. They would spend hours together climbing the stumps and jumping off. Each day the children would go out and pet, brush, and feed their goats. They were good about giving them fresh straw to lay in and cleaning the barn.

We lived on the Oregon Coast were the rain fall is abundant and soon found out the Nubian Goat hates the rain. They would stay in their barn all day looking out at the rain and every once in a while let out a bawl. When the winter storms hit with the thunder and lighting they would began to bawl then they would make a dash for the house crashing through the fence and up onto the front deck. At this time we had an electric fence to keep them in. They seemed to know that it was going to hurt and would scream before they hit it and continue until they were through.

We kept them through one winter and decided we were not setup properly so sold them the next summer. A few years later we would get a mother and two kids for our son we kept them two years before selling them also. The children have fond memories of their goats to this day.