Charlotte and Nell

Last Monday, Zoe and I drove to Russel, MA to look at twin 5-month-old goat sisters.  They had been born to a Boer father and a Saanen mother.  The boer are meat goats, and the Saanen are milk goats.

They were born last November and lived happily outdoors as babies through that bitter winter.  Their pasture was small and on a very steep hill.  Though the girls were very skittish, we felt (sort of) confident that we could help them trust us over time.  The owner grabbed them one by one, and they screamed a most curdling cry.  Then they baahed and baahed.  We put them next to each other in dog crates in the car, and within a few minutes they lay down and were quiet.

When they first arrived, we kept them in their straw bed stall overnight.  The next morning we let them out into their new 7-acre pasture.  We closed the lower gate so they only had run of two of the acres.  The horses snorted and blew in surprise at their new companions.

Spencer chased them!  Yet, the girls did not seem afraid of the horses.  They would just move out of the way and stop.  Right away, they seemed to identify the horses as their new herd, following them around.

Now it’s been five days, and already they eat out of our hands and let us pet them a bit.  They frolic and nibble all day.  Nell is the dark one with stiff ears and dangles under her chin.  Charlotte is white with floppy ears like her dad.  We are hoping they eat poison ivy, bittersweet and buckthorn.