# Silly goats!



## SDGsoap&dairy (Feb 28, 2010)

We are brand new to goats (had them since January) and are still sort of ironing out some kinks.  Here is a funny (?) example.

My Nigi/pygmy doe Shug LOVES to scratch her sides on our chain-link gate.  She leans right into it and just goes to town.  So all you goat folks are going to be thinking "why didn't she see THAT coming?"  But, live and learn I guess.

So, I come home from work the other day and go to feed the does and see that the gate is WIDE OPEN!  Of course I panic for about 3 seconds until I see both does standing INSIDE the pen looking at me like "where's dinner?"  Here are these two critters with the WORST reputation possible about being escape artists and they didn't even try to leave with the gate wide open.  Or, another (equally likely) possibility is that they cruised all 14 acres, waved at the neighbors, then ran back into the pen to look innocent when they heard my car coming up the drive.  

When I inspected the (2nd hand) gate I noticed that the latches were apparently not tightened enough and the pressure had pivoted them on the gate.  So the latches were still closed, but perpendicular to the fence.  Needless to say, they were tightened immediately!

I love goats.


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## annanicole18 (Feb 28, 2010)

goodness you are lucky!! I have to fight with mine to get out my back gate and if they win...well lets just say some of my flowers suffered last year and my roses got a premature pruning.


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## helmstead (Feb 28, 2010)

"What roses...we didn't see any roses, but that browse salad was to DIE for!"


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## SDGsoap&dairy (Feb 28, 2010)

Thankfully I've been slow to get the arugula started this year!


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## helmstead (Feb 28, 2010)

n.smithurmond said:
			
		

> Thankfully I've been slow to get the arugula started this year!


Better wrap your garden in iron gates!  They would break out like clockwork at our place in GA when the blackberries and lettuce were maturing...and the corn, oh the poor corn!


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## kacie (Feb 28, 2010)

uh hey my goat oe just about 20 mins ago had a baby and we wernt there i found one that had frozen and died overnight and the other is alive but really whinney can u help?!?!


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## RockyToggRanch (Feb 28, 2010)

kacie said:
			
		

> uh hey my goat oe just about 20 mins ago had a baby and we wernt there i found one that had frozen and died overnight and the other is alive but really whinney can u help?!?!


Kacie, start a new post in the birthing section. I hope someone can help you there. Good luck.


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## dianneS (Feb 28, 2010)

My goats never try to escape or wander when they have the opportunity to escape either.

If a gate is left open, they might take a few steps outside and look around, but then they go right back in!  I'm really lucky.

We had snow deep enough that the goats could have just hopped the fence any time they wanted, but they didn't.  Such good goats.

I need to build my goats a back scratcher/head scratcher so that they stop rubbing on my fence and barn.  My one guy rubs his head on the barn until his horns are red like the barn siding!


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## michickenwrangler (Feb 28, 2010)

We moved some kids away from their mom, we took the kids in first and forgot to latch the gate behind us. Mom, a Togg named Cleo, pushed it open with her nose and sauntered out after us like a dog going for a walk and followed her kids right into the new stall.


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## Roll farms (Feb 28, 2010)

Puffy used to escape, and then scream and run to the gate to be let back in....Hello, McFly...if you don't want out, don't go out....


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## savingdogs (Mar 1, 2010)

Our goats can open a gate unless we put clip-latches on. They usually stay very near their pen, but they "pruned" my apple trees in a not-so-nice fashion so I make sure to latch it. 
They have good vision and watched how we opened the gate and just did the same thing. Not silly....smart!


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## cmjust0 (Mar 1, 2010)

If the grass is greener on this side of the gate than the other, they'll be on this side..  If the grass is green enough within 10' of the wrong side of the gate that they can eat all day in that 10', they'll be in that 10' when you discover them.

I accidentally left a gate open once when I was working down in the barn.  I'd been down there for hours when my wife comes over - pointing - and goes "Uh, the goats are all out _there_."  I look over and sure enough, they're all going to town in this big shock of tall fescue that hadn't been mowed in a while....right next to the gate.  They'd managed to mow down quite a bit of it, but one shake of a feed pan and they all came running back where they were supposed to be.

I should have known something was up, though, when I could actually swing a hammer in the barn without a goat sniffing the claw end as I drew back...like they usually try to do.  :/


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## DonnaBelle (Mar 1, 2010)

CM have you posted pictures of your goats??  Would love to see the little darlings.

DonnaBelle


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## cmjust0 (Mar 1, 2010)

A few, here and there..  I don't really have anything super recent, though.

You can actually check the whole place out at:

http://www.brownjellybeans.com 

The site could stand a little updating, frankly.  For instance...Eve still has a page, though she's passed away.  

ETA:  Not that I'd take Eve's page down, per se...but I need to update it to reflect her passing, how she passed, and what we did to save the rest.  There are also a couple of goats in with the herd who were babies with up-in-the-air futures at the time when I wrote the site.  They need pages, too.

At some point in the future, I think I'd also like to put sort of a 'how we do things' section on there.  Feeding, general husbandry, meds and dosages we use, links to body condition scoring, stuff like that.

I also have a forum attached to the site, but there are only two users...and they're both me.


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## SDGsoap&dairy (Mar 1, 2010)

Nice site.  You might also mention where you are located (or maybe you did and I just missed it...)


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## Roll farms (Mar 1, 2010)

Nice goats, CM...LOVE Sevin and your new buck is a hottie....I'm a sucker for spots and solid colored ears and he has both.


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## cmjust0 (Mar 1, 2010)

n.smithurmond said:
			
		

> Nice site.  You might also mention where you are located (or maybe you did and I just missed it...)


We're in central KY, about a half-hour north of Lexington.  



			
				Roll said:
			
		

> Nice goats, CM...LOVE Sevin and your new buck is a hottie....I'm a sucker for spots and solid colored ears and he has both.


Seven's a sweetheart, but kind of a weirdo.  We love her anyway.  She's due to kid in about...eight weeks?  Something like that.  Bred to Valentino..  She's starting to 'show' a little.    Her mama's ears are frosty, but she somehow got solid black ears..  Tou just watch, though..  Betcha her kids are all frosty eared.  

As for Valentino...he's something else entirely.  He's been buck wild since the day we picked him up.  His breeders had to literally run him down and catch him -- at 8 weeks -- just so we could get him home.  He never really calmed down.

But, hey...at least he avoids you when you have to go into their pen, unlike our old buck 'Goat Boy' who demanded your sole attention, 100%, 24/7.


I really need to start fooling with our website again..  I wrote it about a year ago in a language called "Adobe Flex 3," just to sorta test the language out a little bit.  I'd never used it before and needed a project...voila, our farm's website was born.

Oh, and uh..the farm name?  That was temporary.  I threw that out there one day during our "name this farm" sessions and we both laughed.  Then came time to name the software project and that's the name I could remember.  Everybody wants to call it 'Pepper Creek' though, instead of 'Peeper Creek'...old home place definitely needs a new name.


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## Roll farms (Mar 1, 2010)

I may be looking for a solid-color-eared buck in a year....do you deliver???


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## DonnaBelle (Mar 1, 2010)

Beautiful farm CM and lovely goats.

You are truly blessed, wife, goats, dogs, and you know how to do computers.  I must have a "computer person" or I am lost.  

Thank goodness for when my 13 yr old grandson visits, he gives me lessons.  He's the one who helped me post pictures on here.

DonnaBelle


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## cmjust0 (Mar 1, 2010)

Roll farms said:
			
		

> I may be looking for a solid-color-eared buck in a year....do you deliver???


If one's born within the next few months...and we still have him in a year...delivery will probably be free by then, along with the buck, just to get him down the road.


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## cmjust0 (Mar 1, 2010)

DonnaBelle said:
			
		

> Beautiful farm CM and lovely goats.
> 
> You are truly blessed, wife, goats, dogs, and you know how to do computers.  I must have a "computer person" or I am lost.
> 
> ...


Thanks.  

I'm a lucky guy..  I've worked hard, but still...luck plays a big role in everyone's life, and I've been pretty lucky overall.


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## lorihadams (Mar 1, 2010)

I think it was FiascoFarm that showed a picture of their homemade scratcher....the head of a good stiff push broom mounted on the side of a post or the side of the barn.....


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## lupinfarm (Mar 1, 2010)

LOL I had the same thing happen to me!!!

Cissy likes to rub on the fence, Mione doesn't car... she rubs on the door frames. ANYHOW, I went out one day and came home to work on the horse fence again and I was in the field putting together a crosspiece for my horse fence and looked at the ground and went "huh, goat berries? ... maybe someones sheep got out or something" and then my mum yelled from the house that the pen gate was wide open. So I'm like freaking out, I turned around to find Cissy and Mione trying to break into the horse pasture LOL. 

They couldn't for the life of them figure out how to get in! Even though the bottom fence rail on the side they were trying to break into was 2-3 feet off the ground and being Mini's they could have walked right under it.


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