We returned to the house to find Lisa and Simon holding on to a brown and white nanny goat while it ate Chief's dog food! It was a very friendly goat but at first they said it seemed that she was going to fight Chief over the dog food. She was rather thin and had some scratches on her, and she looked like she had been on her own for a while.
We decided to tie her up and try to find the owners. I went up the road a few miles to a place where we had seen goats before. They were not home, so I left a note with my name and number. I then went to town to buy some horse chow for her. Actually I was going to buy goat chow, but the feed store lady said most people buy this horse chow for goats since it is less expensive and goats do very well with it. I paid her the $6.25 for a fifty-pound bag after I first made sure that it was ok for pigs to eat, too. (I also got a few more bales of straw while I was there so we would have them when needed.)
The goat really liked the horse chow and she ate right out of the children's hands! Her coat was soft and she enjoyed the attention and petting she got and we enjoyed spoiling her. We started envisioning keeping her and hoping that her owners would not come to get her!
The lady who had the herd of goats down the road did call. We still had hope, however, that we might be able to keep her. She told us that the goat was probably one of the three she sold last week to a guy down the road from us, and that apparently he did not keep the goats confined very well, since they all ran away. She made it sound like the guy did not really want to take care of the goats, so I started thinking that there might be a chance he would let us keep her, or at least let us buy her at a low price.
The lady came over and identified the goat as one that she had sold. The goat was named Fawn and was about 3 years old. She then told us a sad tale. She used to have 22 head of goats, but a pack of wild dogs had recently killed almost her entire herd. She had sold three of the survivors and still had three left. Some of Fawn's cuts were actually from when the dogs had gotten hold of her, but somehow she had managed to get away from them. The dogs did kill her kid, which looked just like her. (We had heard stories of wild dogs running around. It is scary thinking that her place is less than 3 miles from here across the mountains. Hopefully Chief will keep those wild dogs away from Pure Water Hollow! Great Pyrenees dogs are bred to be guard dogs and protectors of herds. They are supposed to keep predatory animals at bay.)
The lady contacted the new owner, and to our dismay, he came and picked up Fawn. I offered to buy her, but he did not want to sell. It may have been our imagination, but it seemed to us that Fawn did not want to go with this man. We sadly watched the guy drag her away from the straw lined doghouse she was staying in, and then finally had to pick her up because she was resisting so hard. Fawn wanted to stay with us and be a Pure Water Hollow goat! At least he did say that if he decides to sell her, he will check with us first.
We have been planning to get some goats, but I've been waiting until we get the pond fixed or at least some fence put up the mountain for a pasture. We have a giant patch of kudzu that continues to grow and will take over Pure Water Hollow in the near future if we don't do something about it. One of the goat's jobs will be to take care of the kudzu. Fawn would have been perfect for this because she was just a scrub goat. We think that we would also like to have some milk goats someday, after the future pasture gets cleaned up a bit.
We had to come to the conclusion that it is not God's timing for us to start a goat herd right now. We really do need to get a place fixed up for them to pasture before we get goats. I fixed up a barn stall for Fawn today just in case she was going to get to stay with us, but the fencing job still has me a bit intimidated. It will cost more money than we are willing to spend right now and I think it will be very difficult to run the fence down and up the ravine and up the mountainside and back down the mountainside and through all the brush and briers. It probably would not get done until spring even if we had Fawn in the barn waiting patiently for a pasture. I must be satisfied that God has not allowed Fawn to be a Pure Water Hollow goat right now, even though I would like to have given it a try! (By the way, if anyone has any fencing tips for goats, I would love to hear them. I'd rather not use electric unless it is absolutely necessary.)
It was nice having a goat around for a day. I believe it was a shadow of things to come in Pure Water Hollow!
2 comments
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Jessica on October 29, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Hello Uncle Eric! That is an exciting story! I hope you will get goats someday! I am sure that Fawn was really cute! Well, have a great Sunday!
Love,
Jessica
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Lynn on November 8, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Hello and thanks for visiting my blog today!
About goats and fencing, I have yet to see a fence keep a goat in. We tried electric several years ago and they crawled under the fence and we had it about 6 inches off the ground and 4 strands. My brother tried dog fence and wooden fence and neither kept his goats in, they would climb it. The best thing I have found to keep a goat in is to chain them up in a spot where you want them to clean at. I know that is alot of trouble, but it works for us. And they don't like to get to far away from home. Goats are very socialable and love people! I use dog collars and dog tie out chains and it seems to work except on a billy and they will usually stay wherever the females are.
Just my 2 cents worth!
Lynn in Eastern Kentucky
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