Rudimentary Homesteading: Buying Our First Dairy Goat

Reader Contribution by Tara-Sky Alford
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I never really thought I would own goats, as my heart was set on purchasing a horse as soon as financially feasible.

 Unfortunately, that looked like it would be a long road. Goats eat a lot less (and they actually produce something) so that route made a lot more sense for our fledgling homestead.
It was early spring when we drove to a farm down the road to look at our prospective addition. Cupcake was an Alpine/LaMancha cross and already in milk. I had never milked an animal in my life. However, being a breastfeeding mother, I was familiar with the concept and figured that every breastfeeding mom innately knows how to get milk out of an udder. We left with Cupcake riding happily in the backseat of our pickup.

We decided to temporarily house her in the old chicken coop pen with access to a fully enclosed stall. New to the whole goat thing, we made some classic mistakes early on. First, she was alone, she had quickly grown VERY attached to me, and the chicken pen was far away from the house. Second, the fencing was a measly four feet high. Ha! Within minutes, she made her first escape, soaring easily over the fence. I think she added an extra 12 inches to her leap just to mock me.

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