About a year ago my partner and I decided that we had had enough of urban living. We sold our house and purchased a tidy semi rural acreage just outside town, with the hopes of using the extra room to finally have the pets we had always talked about getting. Already having dogs, cats, birds, fish, snakes, lizards, turtles, ducks, chooks, guinea pigs and rats at our current dwelling, we figured we could sprawl out a bit and really enjoy the animals we love so much.
So. We had the house. We had the land. We had a perfect set up for a small hobby farm. Now what to get. We needed something fairly small (it is only an acre). We needed something fairly quiete as there are still neighbours close by. We needed something that is relatively low maintenance as we both work full time. Cows - to big. Sheep - higher maintenance. Pigs - pass. GOATS! Yes goats. My partner had always admired the strong solid appearance of boer goats. They would be perfect.
We checked the local papers. Checked a few internet sites, and at the time nothing was available. Then we came across the FarmStock website and noticed an ad for miniature goat wethers in our area. Miniature goats? What are miniature goats? This was intriguing. We phoned the lady and arranged to visit her stud that afternoon. We didn't really know what to expect, but as soon as she showed us her stock we fell in love. We had to have miniatures.
We purchased the little boys off her that day and returned home proud as punch. Two little frightened bundles sitting on Jasons' lap all the way home. "Buck" and "Bandit", became our new obsession. Being bottle babies still on the bottle, we got to spend alot of time in their company and found them to be more like 2 little puppy dogs instead of farm animals. We had to have more.
Back to the FarmStock website. Need more minis. Another breeder in our area had does available, so once again we got to visit another stud full of adorable goats. Immediately one doe stood out from all the rest. She was unlike anything I've ever seen before. With a coat that i can only describe as resembling TV static, we had to have her. Having not even thought about breeding for ourselves, we were slightly hesistant to buy a pregnant goat (we had never done anything like this before) but she was amazing. Now we had 3 goats. The breeder, who turned out to be our most invaluable source of information and inspiration to this very day, kindly offered an in-house stud service if we wished to continue breeding in the future. So the seed was planted. It looked like we were breeding miniature goats.
"Amy/Pepper" had 2 beautiful little twins - a boy and a girl. We put her to stud again, purchased another pregnant doe from the same stud. She had babies, Pepper had more babies - both twins. We visited other studs, purchased stock, sold stock, had births, had deaths (our 2 most perfect goats we could ever think of having RIP). And that brings us to this point in time.
We may not have a huge herd with dozens of kids at any one time and we may not have the smallest stock yet. But we do cherish what we have and realize that we are only starting out in this venture. This is all still fun for us. We are having a ball - most of the time. It's not about pumping out kid after kid in hope getting the smallest goat possible before everyone else. We aim to breed good, quality pets. Something that will keep the grass and weeds down, yet an animal that you can still spend time with. Just on dusk on a Sunday afternoon, sittin down the back playing with my babies. What better way to finish a weekend.
