Well if you follow me on any of my social media, then you already know from my gazillion pictures that we took the plunge and goat kids!!! (If you would like to follow me on social media, all of my links are to the right of this post!) We have had our new goats for about a week now, and they are just perfect! They are now 2 week old Nigerian Dwarf Goat sisters, their birthdays are 5/20/2016, and we have named them Magnolia & Wisteria. So when, who, how, why in the hay did we get goats? Well let me tell ya…
Chris and I have always had a little inner farmer inside the both of us, when we first moved to South Carolina, it was pretty much a “non-negotiable” factor that we wanted acreage so we could have horses, goats, chickens, and probably any other animal I set my eyes on. I LOVE ANIMALS. That is no secret, I was a prior pet sitter, we have 4 dogs, I would have 50 dogs if my husband let me, and anything fuzzy I go gaga over! This isn’t news to you if you know me! Anywhoo, long story short that “non-negotiable” dream to have acreage was trumped by owning a historic home to renovate. We definitely looked at options that had both dreams, a historic home on acreage, but that would have led us to be to far from civilization, which would have been awesome, if my husband didn’t need to work in that civilization. So we compromised and chose a historic home in the city, rather than a home on acreage. But that meant no big farm, no horses, and saying goodbye to one dream, sort of…we could still do chickens and goats!!!
(This is right when they were born, that is the mama, and her 3 triplet doelings. Our two are on the right!
picture credit: Holly Ridge Farm
So we decided it was now time, after living here over a year now, to get us some goaties!!! Yes, we looked into the zoning laws because we literally are in the “heart” of the city, and the only laws for Summerville are the same for dogs, goats, chickens, cows, and horses, you can own them, but they cannot be “at large” basically meaning loose in an unfenced yard, and we don’t have an HOA, so works for me! And a little reminder we share a back fence with a 8 acre cow farm, so they won’t be a nuisance! We got our goats from an amazing goat breeder in the area called Holly Ridge Farm. Holly was amazing and answered all our questions, and makes herself available to her clients who may have future questions too. Her farm is beautiful and she has over 40 goats along with her kids, Pyrenees livestock dogs, chickens, pigs, and a baby fawn! It was so much fun to visit, and we thank her for her hospitality and our new girls! We decided on goats first because even though chickens can be easier to take care of, especially as newbies in all this, goats take longer to produce for you, especially when your starting with newborns, so we made a decision, goats first. It takes about a year and a half for your goats to start giving you milk, where a chicken takes maybe 5-6 months to start laying eggs.
We researched non-stop for the past 2 months on what it takes to raise goats, health requirements, barn set up, etc. It is a lot to take in, and we still have a lot to learn, but we are so happy were doing it! These girls already know who we are, they are so fun to watch, and bring joy to our hearts! They have their own fenced in area to keep them safe from our dogs and any other possible predators, its a good sized area, and we can lock the dogs up and let them graze in the rest of our half acre, maybe when they are bigger we can introduce them to our dogs, supervised of course. The barn we built them pretty much cost us next to nothing, my husband went everyday before work and picked up free pallets off craigslist and took them apart one by one and built our girls this beautiful barn. We found the windows in our attic, they look to be very old and could be original to the house somewhere, and the double dutch barn doors we built from scratch too. If you would like a step by step or have any questions, we would love to answer them!
Our goal in the long run is to have maybe 4-8 chickens and 3-4 goats, our garden, a tiny orchard, rain barrels, along with his hunting, and new fishing skills. My husband and I have always wanted to learn to be able to support ourselves on a small scale. We are not heavy into “prepping” or “survivalists” whatsoever, we just want to be able to know how to do things ourselves, knowing how to sustain a life without depending on someone else if we had to. We are on our way to being the little homestead that we’ve always wanted. I will definitely keep y’all updated on how the girls are doing, what we learn along the way, and would love to answer any questions you might have!
Mahalo!
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Anna Nuttall says
Awww soo cute <3 I recently took my niece to feed some baby goat – she loved it!! xx