Now that we know we're getting goats in the next day or two I've been reading up on them with special focus. I joined a forum called "The Goat Spot" that has technical articles as well as member posts on everything from diet and health to selective breeding methods.
Surfing that site and reading other articles I find online produces mixed thoughts. On the one hand, goats are animals that have managed to survive for millennia, both in the wild and in captivity. How hard can this be? They eat, they poop, they sleep. If I provide food, adequate shelter, and basic cleanliness they should pretty much raise themselves.
On the other hand, I read about dietary problems from copper deficiency, selenium deficiency, scours (diarrhea), and the disastrous results of an imbalanced rumen. Vaccinations, boluses, hoof trimming, de-worming....
I am a rookie who knows nothing. Anyone who raises goats and didn't grow up with them also started at the beginning, so I'm not the first person to break in. But a mistake of sufficient magnitude can mean death, and that's both sad and costly financially. Yeah, I'm a little anxious about this. (In a way, it seems odd to worry about a goat dying when my goal is to kill it in a year.)
I had a video conversation this morning with a terrific couple I'll be doing the wedding for in May. By prior arrangement I drove into a Starbucks for the "meeting" because we can't do streaming at home with our satellite internet.
I got there early enough to go via a link from the aforementioned goat forum to a YouTube video about how to tan hides, something I hope to do when I butcher.
Hilarious.
The guy doing the video was skinny, 30-ish, and lived somewhere so deep in the Appalachian south that he was hard to understand. He had a mullet, a wife-beater shirt, and old blue jeans that all but fell off his hips. He filmed this out back of his place and there were old sheds overgrown with vegetation, broken down lawnmowers (no lawn in sight), and junk everywhere.
But hey, it was a pretty good video, 24 minutes long, that explained and demonstrated the steps well.
It was 30 F when I went for my run this afternoon. If I didn't have this race in two weeks I would NOT be pounding the pavement in this cold.
Pam's working in the 2-year old's class tomorrow so I'm on my own in the worship service. We meet in a H.S. gym and on the back side the bleachers are pulled out. Pam finds them very uncomfortable but I like sitting there. A little more elbow room than in the rows of chairs, and something about being back there helps me focus. It's almost like eavesdropping.
Yeah, weird.
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