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    A New Kid on the Block: Gone with the Goats, #2
    A New Kid on the Block: Gone with the Goats, #2
    A New Kid on the Block: Gone with the Goats, #2
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    A New Kid on the Block: Gone with the Goats, #2

    By Barbara Chavez

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    About this ebook

    This is my second book chronicling my adventures with goats. In my first book, "Gone with the Goats," I described how my husband, Robert, and I had resettled from Arizona to Maryland in 2003, moving into a home on eight acres of mostly-forested land that allowed room for our beloved dogs to run. The property had a couple of drawbacks, however: clinging vines and thorny brambles, which were choking many of our trees.

    In 2007, in an effort to eradicate these annoyances, I acquired a couple of weed-eaters -- i.e., pygmy goats -- whom I appropriately named Husq and Varna, after the Swedish power tool company. For more than a decade, my sweet little girls performed their jobs admirably, completely eliminating the unwanted vegetation on the five acres of forest in which they inhabited, and turning it into a paradise.

    Then one autumn day in 2017, my darling black pygmy goat, Varna, was mysteriously killed. This left my brown pygmy, Husq, without a companion. This book provides a detailed diary of my adventures in finding a new goat friend for Husq, and how this new goat acclimated to her new surroundings. More importantly, they describe how she and Husq forged their relationship, and the memories we all made together. 23,000 words.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarbara Chavez
    Release dateJan 4, 2020
    ISBN9781393132233
    A New Kid on the Block: Gone with the Goats, #2

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      Book preview

      A New Kid on the Block - Barbara Chavez

      Acknowledgments

      To my husband, Robert , for encouraging my writing; to my friends Betsy, Susan, and Pearl for their valuable editing and suggestions; and finally, to my friend Ruth, for helping me get my new goat started off on the right hoof.

      Introduction

      This is my second book chronicling my adventures with goats. In my first book, Gone with the Goats, I described how my husband, Robert, and I had resettled from Arizona to Maryland in 2003, moving into a home on eight acres of mostly-forested land that allowed room for our beloved dogs to run. The property had a couple of drawbacks, however: clinging vines and thorny brambles, which were choking many of our trees.

      In 2007, in an effort to eradicate these annoyances, I acquired a couple of weed-eaters—i.e., pygmy goats—whom I appropriately named Husq and Varna, after the Swedish power tool company. For more than a decade, my sweet little girls performed their jobs admirably, completely eliminating the unwanted vegetation on the five acres of forest in which they inhabited, and turning it into a paradise.

      Then one autumn day in 2017, my darling black pygmy goat, Varna, was mysteriously killed. This left my brown pygmy, Husq, without a companion. The chapters that follow provide a detailed diary of my adventures in finding a new goat friend for Husq, and how this new goat acclimated to her new surroundings. More importantly, they describe how she and Husq forged their relationship, and the memories we all made together.

      Chapter 1: Finding a Goat

      It was spring 2018 , and time to find a new friend for Husq. While Husq didn't seem to mind being alone, I felt sad seeing her out in the forest all by herself day after day. Due to my concern, I spent a lot of time with her, showering her with love. So, as you can see, I needed Husq to have a new friend almost more than she did. But I didn't want to bring home a new goat until I was sure there'd be no more freezing nights, and I was frustrated that we'd had an unusually long winter, with nighttime temperatures below 32° all the way through the end of April.

      As I waited for the weather to become milder, I looked at various options for finding goats. Eleven years before, I'd used the newspaper's classified ads, but now I had the benefit of better technology, and found Craigslist to be my best source for goat ads.

      I used Baltimore and Frederick as my search areas, and for sale—farm & garden as the category. As for keywords, I decided that searching by breed would work best. There were only two breeds I was interested in: pygmy (like Husq) or Nigerian dwarf. Each of those was a small breed, which was perfect for my little five-acre forest.

      Finally, at the beginning of May, the weather warmed up and I was ready to get my goat. However, I had not yet found an ad with exactly what I wanted: a hornless, female pygmy or Nigerian Dwarf kid within 30 minutes of my house. I had very good reasons for these specific criteria:

      Ideally, I was looking for a kid, about 12-16 weeks old. Husq and Varna had been 16 weeks old when I'd brought them home in my little Hyundai Accent in 2007. Now, 11 years later, I wanted to bring home my new goat in that same car. I didn't want to bother my friends for the use of their pickup trucks or trailers. Also, I figured a younger goat would be accepted more easily by Husq; there wouldn't be the power struggle that two adult females might engage in.

      And I definitely wanted a female goat (a doe). Male goats (bucks) are stinky and sometimes aggressive. Also, a male goat could breed with Husq, and at her age I didn't think it would be safe or easy for her to have a baby. The only way to avoid the negative aspects of a male goat is to have it castrated (turning a buck into a wether), but I thought castrating seemed a bit cruel. In any event, female goats don't need to be altered at all, so why not stick with females?

      I wanted a naturally hornless goat because both Husq and Varna had been born hornless (known as polled), and with the tendency of goats to butt heads, I didn't want Husq to get hurt butting heads with a horned goat. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find polled goats. Farmers rarely breed two polled goats together because it sometimes results in intersex kids (born with both male and female body parts) that cannot bear or father children.

      Some farmers disbud their kids to keep them from developing horns. This requires burning the horn buds with a hot iron at 4-10 days of age. I absolutely did not want a disbudded goat because the technique sounded excruciating. So, if I couldn't find a polled kid, I might have to lower my expectations and consider a horned one.

      Finally, I was hoping to have to drive no more than 30 minutes to pick up my goat. The closer to home, the less chance of pooping, peeing, throwing up, or restlessness in the car as we drove (and I didn't want the goat doing any of that stuff either!). And so my diary begins...

      Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

      This evening, I finally found an ad for pygmy goat doelings (female kids) that meets all my criteria except for location (the farm is 45 minutes away). Prior to today, most of the ads have been for bucklings, and the ones for doelings have been for registered Nigerian dwarf doelings at $350-$400 a pop—too much to spend for a weed-eater! Husq and Varna had only cost me $50 each 11 years ago.

      According to this ad, the farm has 20 pygmy kids, with doelings going for $150. I can handle that price. It sounds like they'll have a good selection, and maybe they'll even have a polled doeling! I'll text them tomorrow.

      In the meantime, when I went down to the forest to visit Husq today, I noticed she's showing signs of copper deficiency again. It's been a whole year since she last had this problem, which I solved by feeding her Copper Oxide Wire Particles (COWP) mixed into her grain. This time, the deficiency had totally escaped my attention because she didn't get the usual bald spot on the top of her head. Instead, her nose has lost most of its hair, and I hadn't even noticed! Tomorrow, I'll start her on two grams of COWP per day (a kid-sized dose that comes in a bolus [capsule]) until she starts showing signs of improvement. What a time for this to happen! I want her to be perfectly healthy when the new

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