Well, as you might have been following along with and learning about us, we are going to be working towards starting our own little goat dairy…  Just for our own needs, two little milk does named Buttercup and Daisy!

But to make that happen in the coming spring, we’re going to be needing to “freshen” our does, which means we need to breed them and to that means we need a baby daddy for their offspring!

Now sure…  we could probably take them to someone that has a buck and give them a little time with said handsome stud, but that usually involves a bit of money or trade or something.  And you have to find the right buck and you risk your does catching something off farm and bringing it back and then there is the whole logistics of catching them in heat and they have to go through the stress of leaving their home to go to another place for a while and then coming back!

Whew.   Not really simple.

So enter stage right…  our new little pygora buck, Dreamweaver!

Future Windhaven Goat Baby Daddy!

Doesn’t he have just the most handsome golden eyes?  I’m quite certain any doe goat would find him hard to resist…

(Haha… Otis photobombing Dreamy’s first photo shoot!)

So… what’s the story of our little goat stud Dreamweaver?  Well…..  I had given this all a great amount of consideration.  You see, I didn’t want to just breed a couple babies that would end up as meat critters or might be hard to sell as milk does after they were born.  I wanted to make sure that I had some sort of desirable offspring each year to make this whole endeavor work.

Since we are really a fiber homestead, with the sheep and the angora goats and rabbits…  it made sense to consider a fiber buck to breed to all our goat does.  Even our Angora doe, Rana.  However, that means we needed to find either a smallish angora buck or consider a pygora, which is a recognized breed based on the angoras and pygmy goats!  (A smaller angora, if you please!)  Perfect!

But not perfect!   All the angora bucks I could find in the area were very expensive!  $300 to $400 and more!   And one breeder let me know that she did not approve of my plan to breed half breeds with my dairy does!!!  Oh well.  Some people just really get into things like that.   I just want babies that others might really want as cute fiber pets or that I could ultimately keep for fiber animals myself.  I hate the idea of breeding weird baby goats just for the livestock auction and the butcher’s block.  If I wanted to do that, I would probably pick a Boer goat, which is a meat goat.

So, I was just waiting, hoping that I might find my little Angora or a regular Pygora and I was talking to my friend Justin, whom purchased our four sheep we had for sale a bit back and was interested in a website for his CSA garden!  So I told him, I’d be happy to design a nice website in exchange for my dream buck!  He accepted the challenge.  Win win situation, if you ask me.

Well the neatest thing happened.   Another friend, Sarah, who was Buttercup’s breeder and a fine bit of wisdom on all things goats, she told me about a pygora buck that she had seen at a local farm that was for sale.   The little guy was just a year old, maybe 18 months, and had been living on a horse training ranch as a roping horse practice tool!

Oh no!   Can you guess what he did?

Yeah…  he was the object of chase…  and roped and roped and all.  They had bought him somewhere along the way and he was getting a little older, perhaps slower?  I suspect that it was also that they had several goat bucks and not enough does to go around and the boys were all getting a little crazy.

Well, Justin snapped him up for a song!  Actually more like a Grant.  A President Grant!

And he got a HECK of a great deal on a website!  And I got the cutest little fellow to be my handsome goat stud!  We might have to get him a chair for his amorous advances for the fair Rana as she’s a bit taller than he, but he’ll be a great match for Daisy and Buttercup!  In fact, they are in love already…. hanging out at the fence and casting moon eyes his way!

His official name is Dreamweaver.   And that is the software that I primarily use to design websites!   (I use Photoshop a good deal as well, to create the graphics and such, but Photoshop just doesn’t have the right ring….)   And it’s just a fun name because the girls all think he’s dreamy….   He really is a pretty sweet goat.  I was surprised, just a day after he arrived he was up at the fence and timid, but pretty much ready to be our friend.

As you can see, he’s not huge by any means.   That is him standing next to Travis, our 6 month old Shetland whether.  Dreamy is about 18-20 inches at the shoulder.  He’s got nice long angora style locks, and it looked like he had never been sheared!  His locks in some places were over 9 inches long!   Problem is, they were pretty nasty, felted into dreadlocks in places and matted in the back especially.   He would need a early fall trim up for certain.

So far I believe he really does enjoy this place.   He really liked the apples…  and he’s pretty chummy with his friends Otis and Travis.  At first there was a good deal of head butting, posturing and then ignoring going on, but that only lasted a good day.   Now, he’s just one of the gang.

And the nice thing is that he won’t cost much at all to keep.  Grass for most of the year and a bit of hay in the winter.  And being a fiber goat, he will have two beautiful pygora fleeces for us each year!   Add in a handful of babies each year, and he’s a easy keeper!  He’s got a lifetime job if all goes well!

I think he’s a cute little dickens, don’t you?   And I’m excited because his full brother is a black pygora so that means the genes are in there to have some fairly interesting little LaPygoras!  hahah….  (Buttercup is a lamancha goat!   Daisy is a sanaan/pygmy grade doe.)  Should be interesting in the spring around here!

I think it’s cute to see all the goat girls hanging out at the fence.  Rafeka was rather annoyed by this little dapper buck.  He wants nothing to do with him.   But Rana, Buttercup and Daisy found him to be some interesting eye candy to say the least.  They are all acting very nonchalant about this whole goat sex thing.  I want them to wait another week or so before we let nature take it’s course.   Goats have a gestation of 5 months pretty much like sheep do.   So if we wait till just a little into November, then we might have middle of the month April babies which worked out just nicely this past spring!  Plus it gives us a chance to make sure that Dreamy is healthy and isn’t sick or anything.  And to give him a haircut!!!

But that’s another post….

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