Our "Dog" Goat

This is a story about a goat that has turned into a perfect pet. We started raising Boer goats on our hobby farm about two years ago and now we have about 27 with many on the way in a couple of months.

During this past summer on a very hot and humid day we had a doe give birth to two does. She was not attentive to them and one ended up dying. The other one was extremely small so we took her inside and cleaned her up as momma didn't. My children were able to milk some colostrum from the momma and we fed it to the little one with a syringe. We also had frozen colostrum from our dairy goat just for such an emergency. We were milking our Saanen during this time so feeding the baby was quite convenient. I will say that baby Boer goats want to eat more often than a dairy breed. She never seemed satisfied unless she was eating every other hour.

We kept her in the bathtub for several days until her little legs were stronger and then we got a giant tote box with woodchips and kept that in the bathroom. When she could walk around better, we would take her outside for exercise and then let her wander through the kitchen and bathroom with us. She loved being outside but if you went in the house she had to come too. If you left her outside she would stand on the stoop and just cry and cry like a baby. She would follow us around everywhere just like a little puppy. If we were sitting at the table she would lay at our feet just like a dog would do. Our baby stayed in the house for about a month and then we moved her to her own pen in the goat barn.

When my children would milk our dairy goat in the morning, they would let the baby out and she would follow them down to the house. They would fix her bottle so she would come in and drink that and visit with us. Then I would send her outside as her potty manners were nonexistent. She would hang around the house eating grass and weeds and napping. If she wasn't down on the step in the morning you would just call her name, "Flower" and she would come running to meet you. In the evening she would get her evening bottle and be put to bed in the barn. After she quit taking bottles she would still be let out in the morning and put back to bed at night. One night we forgot to put her to bed and we discovered that she had put herself to bed. So, now she comes down in the morning to greet you, check things out and visit. Then when it starts getting dark she goes to the barn by herself. So we have the best of two worlds, a great pet and a lawnmower all rolled up in one.