Our Goat Keeping Days Part 2

Continued from yesterday more about our goats at the smallholding in Knodishall near the Suffolk coast.

Four of our goats enjoying some fresh grass on the campsite - winter 1998. 

Below are 3 of the girls trimming the new willow hedge around the campsite in 2001. Goats are really browsers rather than grazers although they do eat grass and need hay all the time they'd much prefer a nice hedge or tree!

 That is Molly in the middle - we didn't keep her long she was the nastiest little goat we ever owned. I'd spotted an ad in the newspaper for someone giving away goats and as it was local we went to look. We really should have turned round and headed home as soon as we arrived because the place was a tip. There were goats and rubbish everywhere and a very elderly man hobbling around using 2 muck forks as walking sticks. The goats had obviously been fed and watered but left to run wild and breed any old how but little Molly was a Tog and I'd missed having Toggenbergs since Daisy "left us" due to old age a few years previously, so we took her home. I'm afraid she went off to be put down not long after she'd nearly knocked me over several times.

I think almost the last goats we bought was another Saanen called Rose and her kid Tilly. We travelled up to Norfolk to collect them. Rose had been mated with a Golden Guernsey so little Tilly was a lovely   Golden Guernsey/Saanen cross. 

A very strange coincidence happened  two years later when someone we'd never met - who I'd been writing to as a penfriend for a year - came to stay on the campsite. We'd become penfriends through a small magazine called The Penny Pincher Paper. I knew she'd got a goat but after she looked hard at Tilly and asked where we'd got her it turned out that her goat Milly was Tilly's twin who had already been sold when we collected Rose and Tilly from Norfolk. My penfriend and her family had been up to Norfolk from Essex to collect Milly just a few days before we collected our girls. - Very odd coincidence. 

Below is Tilly with her kid in 2003- we'd used a friends Boer goat billy for this mating because they had room to keep Tilly for 5 days.  Back at the beginning it was easy to move goats for mating - that was before movement books and ear tags and Much Hassle. You could  spot her being in season, load her into a trailer, take her to a billy and a hour or so later take her home again. It gradually got more difficult after foot and mouth disease  as moving an animal on and off the holding on the same day wasn't allowed. 

A few  years later we were able to mate Tilly with a decent male goat and I registered her kid with the British Goat Society  - Noddishall Izzy. Something I'd always wanted to do - just so I could have a herd name and see a goat listed in the BGS yearbook!  We were never interested in showing goats or milk recording so didn't really need to have them registered.

Why did we give up in 2010?

There were several reasons. Around then we were thinking about moving to Wales, our neighbour who milked for us when we were on holiday had started to get arthritis in her hands and with the children moved out we didn't need as much milk. 

Goats are a real tie, it's easy to ask someone to feed chickens and collect eggs but not so simple to find a goat milker. Even a long day out needed someone to come and check them.

We advertised the goats in the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter but the first person who planned to buy our goats then backed out. We gave up the moving plan when we searched for a house and found that everyone selling was English, moving back to England, had bought when prices were high, and wanted daft amounts for their houses,  and then to cap it all I wasn't well for a while and as Colin had never been able to milk - his thumbs were double jointed and would never bend the right way for milking so I had to carry on milking even when quite poorly. By the time I was better  a new enthusiastic buyer had appeared on the scene. So we went ahead and sold the two girls we still had - an elderly Tilly and the younger Izzy. 

It was a sensible decision but a sad one. They are such lovely animals to keep, loads of character and it was good having fresh milk everyday without needing to go the the shop. For nearly 20 years we rarely bought milk, I taught lots of people how to milk and care for goats and surprised dozens of people when they tasted what fresh clean goats milk should taste like. Happy memories.

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I found this little framed print on line, sorry it won't enlarge enough to see the breeds - I would have loved to have had this when I was goat keeping

Someone asked if they were pets or livestock. On our smallholding everything had to have a purpose so although they were much loved and enjoyed we never had a problem sending them off when they got too old or sending the billy kids for meat. I met lots of smallholders who wouldn't have dreamed of doing either but it was the same for us for our sheep and laying hens and the pigs we raised for meat. They were all looked after properly and had a good life on the holding  and the breeding adults given names but lambs and pigs had a purpose and chickens too old for egg laying were soon dispatched.

I quite expect follow numbers to suddenly drop after saying that! but on a farm things that don't pay their way can't be kept. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue