Little Buttercup has a new friend. Her new little sister! (Well, not a REAL sister, because Miss Daisy is a Nubian doeling, and Miss Buttercup is a LaMancha/Nubian cross…) But they will become sweet little sisters I hope! So far, so good…
Miss Daisy is only a week old, and was born just up the road from us at a nice lady’s farm. She has a lot of goats, over 100! It was just a stroke of luck that we made a connection and I got to bring home the last part of my homestead dairy plans!
Buttercup and the Angora twins, Rana and Rafeka, have not been getting together well. They are pretty mean to her, still. I thought they would be able to work it all out, but apparently in the goat world, two older bonded pairs don’t like a 3 week old third wheel.
So I’ve been looking about for a friend for Princess Buttercup. I considered getting a whether goat pal, that is a fixed boy, but then I thought, no, unfortunately, whether goats are really pretty much just companion animals. No fiber, no breeding, well, you get the picture. We just don’t have a huge place here and I just can’t keep lots of animals that don’t help with some sort of contribution. Sure, you can eat whethers, but then that’s not too fun for Buttercup… hey, here’s a friend, we’re gonna eat him in a few months!
Nope… and then I thought, having two milk does works nicely too. We can breed both each year, or if we desire, we can stagger them so that we can have one milking all the time. (Doe A would be bred Year 1 and then not bred Year 2, so she can be milked longer. Doe B would be bred for Year 2, and then not bred Year 3, so she milks longer… With pregnant does, you need to dry them off before they too deep into their pregnancy term so she will have strength for delivery and grow up a good baby…)
And if something were to happen to one, you would still have another. Not a fun thought, but hey, things do happen with livestock.
I was in a bidding war at the livestock auction with a beautiful young Nubian doe but lost to a dairy farmer! Agh! But then got home, made the connection with the lady down the road! She had two little goaties… but when I saw this little face, I knew that was the perfect little doe for our plans!
After all, she even looks like Buttercup! They could be sisters!!! What a happy little girl… she is such a doll! She took so well to being seperated from her mom and learned how to use a bottle in just 5 minutes! (Sometimes they can be a little fussy about making the jump from mom to a nipple….) She’s such a smart little cookie, it took her hardly anytime.
She’s only about a foot tall, but she’s fiesty. She has some mini-nubian in her pedigree so she will be petite. That’s fine with me. I like little farm animals! She hung out with us for the afternoon, but then a little later in the early evening, I brought her out to meet her new sissy and the twins. More cute pictures to follow…
In the meanwhile, enjoy this adorably cute picture of little Miss Daisy snoozing in my arms, just as happy as any little goatie can be. Its making me just die waiting for my little lambs!!! Soooon…. The most earliest due date would be April 4th… More like the second and third week of April to begin, I think… Just can’t wait!!!!!
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