It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site so I wanted to go through some upcoming changes and what has been going on over the past year!
Some sad news first, we lost a number of our goats starting from February 2022 to what at the time was a mystery illness. Our all black pygmy girl, Darkness and her daughter Nova, suddenly got sick that January and sadly succumbed in early February. The next year we saw the same sickness pop up in Fancy, Piper, Pan, Ethel and Captain. We tried everything we knew and consulted an emergency goat team and we continued to lose our goats. In May of 2024, our beloved Jojo, who is Fancy’s only offspring, started showing the same signs and I was determined not to lose her too. I was able to find an online livestock vet to talk to and she determined it was likely meningeal worm which is passed from snails to deer to the environment so there was little preventive actions we could take. However, the vet did give us a treatment plan for Jojo and she thankfully fully recovered after a week! Since then we have not lost a goat to the worms and know exactly what to do when they pop up again. We also lost two of our most promising kid goats, Moose and Dot, to predators and we found Freyja by the pasture pond with no wounds or evidence of sickness so we are unsure what really happened to her.
During this time, our family also lost three house pets to age related illnesses. Gus’ parents who live on the property with us, lost their cat Pip and Irish Terrier Jim. We suddenly lost my soul dog, Dakota, when we returned from our honeymoon. About a week before we left for Japan, she starting losing the function in her back legs and took her to the vet for treatment with the hope that she would be better by the time we returned. Unfortunately, her conditioned worsened and I made the tough decision to put her down when we got home.
A few months later, the back of the kennel building caught on fire and we rushed to get all of the dogs out. Our elderly barn cat, Mama Cat, made it out of the building but died the next day from the smoke.
That’s enough doom and gloom for now, on to the good stuff! A few months after saying goodbye to Kota, Gus took me to the animal shelter “just to look”. After looking at all the dogs and not really feeling connected to any of them, the employee said they had one hound puppy left in the back if we wanted to see her so of course I did. We sat on the bench outside for them to bring her out and as soon as she saw me, she jumped straight in my lap and started licking me. I started to cry and looked over at Gus who said we could get her despite always saying no to hounds. We filled out the paperwork, named her Scout, and she was ours! Since then I’ve done a lot of training with her because she loves it and she’s very wild so she also needs it. She is being trained in scent work and I’m hoping to eventually compete with her.
The kennel building restoration is basically done now as well! The half the was the most damaged has been converted into a large barn for the goats and the inside is now a larger woodshop. We still have a lot of work to do around the property but its slowly coming together!
Going forward, I will be adding a mobile petting zoo service to our business so if you’re interested in having a few goats at your next party, keep an eye out for that! We also bought a full Alpine buck named Atlas, who we hope to breed to Sugar and Pumpkin this fall. This will give us some larger and good natured goats that I will be able to pack with on hikes.
For those wondering or keeping track, below is a list of all our current animals. Bonus points if you can tell who is related based on their names! Maybe someday I’ll draw up a family tree for everyone.
Dogs: Scout and Sazed
Does: Cinnamon, Sugar, Gretel, Gaia, Pumpkin, Sunflower, Jolene “Jojo”, Lulu, and Pepper
Wethers: Thor, Butterscotch and Mogwai
Bucks: Ragnar, Hansel and Atlas
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