Assuming you read the title of this post properly, I assure you that I did write billy goat. I know, we didn’t want anything to do with a male goat at least for a few years, so we couldn’t possibly be having billy goat adventures. Except now we are.
You see, the thing about having milking goats is that you need to breed them to, you know, get milk out of them. They have to have akid to lactate, and our three girls are coming right up on the time for breeding. The original plan had been to find a local billy goat and pay his owner to let us breed our three goats with him. But we would have had to drive a decent distance, leave our goats there for up to three weeks, and pay for the housing, feed, and care of all three of them. Not to mention, many breeders won’t breed their buck with a doe that has horns (ahem, Rosie). And of course, we would have the same problem next year.
Naturally, our minds jumped to the question of how much it would cost to just buy our own buck. I know, scary waters for the mind to wade into. As God would have it, there was a very reasonably priced proven-breeder, very friendly, nubian buck in Montrose. His name is Henry (As far as I am concerned, he was named after my great-great-grandfather). On September 18th, Henry will be joining us at the Hust Roost. Then we can start naming all of his children Henry II, Henry III, and so on. I am most looking forward to Henry V, for all of you history geeks.
Anyway, there is another really big bonus to Henry. He (supposedly) doesn’t mind living by himself. This is great because most goats do mind, and we have to keep the buck and does separated pretty much always besides when they are… doing their thing. So the question at that point was if we wanted to breed Henry to our girls and then sell him or if we wanted to keep him indefinitely and make him the sire of our herd.
We decided to keep him, so this week I have building a little lean to for Henry off the back of our chicken coop (goats and chickens co-exist quite nicely). Nine more days to get it done! Gotta love hard deadlines. If nothing else, I can say I did it for Henry, even though I really did it so I can enjoy goat milk next spring.