Picture Sienna happily chomping away on her alfalfa and feed while I squirt milk into the pail, Lily, the barn cat, resting nearby. Usually our milking time together in the barn is very quiet. But it has not been so the past couple of weeks. We’ve had an invasion. We are now sharing the barn with kids.

My husband transformed half the barn into a makeshift goat nursery. Ever heard a hungry or scared kid crying for its mama? It’s loud. So loud, in fact, that there have been a few times where Sienna completely stops eating and looks over at the goats wondering what in the world is making that awful racket. You know it has to be something for Sienna to actually stop eating and take her head out of the feed bin. I’ve tried pulling her head out on several occasions. It doesn’t budge. She’s glued to her food.

I’ll be honest. I don’t know that much about goats. And I don’t like our goats. They are my husband’s project. If someone asks me how many goats we have, I answer, “Too many.”

I know we have one adult buck. And he stinks. Literally, he smells extremely foul. I guess it’s a sort of mating perfume that is supposed to attract the does. We have several does and now some kids, too.  

Unlike horses and cows, goats have a mating season. What that means on our farm is that all the does get bred at the same time of year and then kid very close together. I also know that we mostly have Kiko goats and some are a cross of a little Alpine and Nubian.

We get asked often if we milk the goats. The short answer is “not usually.” I may post more on that another time. For now, I will leave you with the only compliment I have for the goats:

The babies are very cute.