Hello Everyone,
My husband and myself, with our 17 year old son, currently live in Montana on 26 acres with our little heard of 12 Nigerian dwarf goats, 2 dogs, chickens, and will soon have a few more piglets, as our last two are in the freezer! I lived on my grandparents dairy farm when young and have always longed for some acreage to have some goats, along with fresh milk and cheese, and here we are now! We raised most of our children in the suburbs of Ca with our backyard chickens, big garden, and homeschooling. When my husband took an early retirement 5 years ago we sold everything and moved to Montana where a lot of my family lives and started living our dream.
Three of our children graduated here in Montana, one still has another year, and two moved here, one with his 2 daughters after the sudden death of his wife, and the other after getting a bachelor’s in nursing and getting a job here. She brought her husband and is in the process of adopting 4 beautiful youngin's who come out to grandma’s ranch weekly to visit with, “their goats” and help me out. Our roots are starting to sink deeply here and we are enjoying the journey! I guess that would make us hobby farmers for now, though I’m getting lots of requests for our milk and have looked into the regulations of how to sell it here. It looks like I can sell stock in my goats, if my herd is under 25, and distribute milk that way, to the stockholders, without being certified to “sell” milk in Montana. A nice loophole for small dairies. I need to do more in-depth research before making that jump though. For now, I milk my ladies, we drink our milk, make cheese, yogurt, ice cream, etc. In spring, it’s still the coldest month of the year here, -39 last week but going to be above zero today, I’ll plant a big garden, witness the joy of prancing goats in the pastures, eat our own raised meat and veggies and find joy in each day!
I’m Looking forward to learning and growing with this group as we truly are new to raising goats. We started with 2 pregnant does over a year ago and now have 6 does, 2 doelings born 2 days ago , 1 wether and 1 buck, and 2 buckling born last night. The new births were a bit of a surprise, our little buckling we bought last summer obviously had his way with 2 of our doelings when he escaped last September for a very short bit, while we were expanding his enclosure! Now we have have two 10 and a half month old new mommies, healthy and happy! Our other does will hopefully deliver in the warmth of May, maybe June.
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Welcome! And congratulations on the new babies!