Building the goat herd

I’m always trying to match up the needs of our land to the needs of the animals. As it stands right now we do not have enough grazers/browsers, even with possible goat kids in sight. Lately I’ve developed a keen interest in the Dutch Landrace Goat, a goat that can withstand some rain.

We found a young doe in the area, she needs some work but she is healthy and I think It’ll work out. She is going through the whiney phase right now so I have to sit out the screams as I’m writing this, she is a lot louder then my Toggenburgs. She came from a farm where she got used to a lot of animals and kids. The problem was that she jumped the fence, they had a flat board on top of the fence so no surprise she could play on there. She was also hard to catch, a bit skittish which is not good with kids around.

My impression was that she was a bit wild but the ride home made me change my opinion. She layed down next to me and gave off a gentle feel, she was not tensing up when I pet her meaning she wasn’t such a wild girl after all.
At home my concern was she might get out of the barn since I saw first hand how high she could jump. I put her in with Kimiko for the night since she wouldn’t compete with her, she’s just that kinda girl. Sure enough they were sleeping against each other, all good.

This morning I took a leap of faith by opening the barn door and just let them out in the electric fence. It’s a bit of a risk with a jumpy goat in a new area.
My thoughts were that if I kept her in and handled her the tension might build up causing her to jump or at least challenge the door.
If I would put her in a fenced area fortified with wire then she might return to the habit of wanting to jump the solid fence.
My best bet would be to let her out in the electric fence and hoping she would bond with the other goats. So far she’s out for two hours and no escaping. She does get into a battle for dominance with Shizu (our adult milking doe), she is actually stronger then Shizu to my surprise but I don’t think she’ll give up her throne that easily.

One thing my gut tells me is that she might also be jumpy because of her feet. I don’t want to put her through anymore stress on the first day but tomorrow evening I’m going to trim them. I have the feeling they are overgrown. I’m maintaining my goats hooves every three months.

As it stands now the goats seem to have reached a cease fire. Shizu is still queen. Our new girl is occasionally letting out a series of screams while the herd ignores her and once she stops they join up and graze as one entity. Funny to watch this establish. I’m keeping a close eye on them. I removed Shizu’s collar because of the fighting so no horns get caught. Oh we named our new girl Ayumi, which means “she who walks her own path”. All our goats have japanese names, it’s a thing.

With goats, if all goes well the first two days all will be fine. The handling will follow later, Kimiko was almost impossible to catch when we first got her and she turned into a very sweet girl docile girl too. I’ll tell you more about her and the breed in the next couple days.

EDIT: Ok so I went out to take some pictures and she went straight through the wire three times. Then I put her in the barn to re-do the wiring and she jumped the barn. Truthfully there was not such a good spark on the wire and I only had three rows since my girls stay in the fence anyway. So I put up a small paddock with more wires and a good spark, lets see what she does. I only have her in with kimiko so I don’t have to deal with the other goats if she tries something. Ain’t it fun having goats?

Ayumi, Shizu is photobombing