My son has been asking for months what animal he gets since his sister was given a horse. He has been wanting a African Grey Parrot and I am not for birds in the house ever again after raising chicks inside for too long due to an extended winter. So I made a deal with him to hit up the exotic animal auction a town over where he could pick out an animal to raise.
I took him because I figured he would want the African micro squirrels; I could handle an animal in a cage inside. He picked a goat, a very specific goat: #272 was the goat he wanted. I sat at the auction all day waiting for goats to be auctioned. I was strong and didn’t bid on the mini highland bull or the baby water buffalo.
Finally, late at night they start selling goats. This was my first time at the auction, so I was hoping to see what goats were going for, but #272 was one of the first out for auction so I had to just go with it. Luckily, I won the bid for $30 and got sweet #272. Knowing goats are herd animals I was now on the search for another goat. #272 was male so I wanted another male so not to start multiplying quickly. I was able to get another one for quite a bit more than the first, but he was super cute!
On the way home knew we needed some milk for them, so to the grocery store we headed. We got milk and a couple bottles and headed home, with the goats on my lap as we didn’t prepare to bring anything home.
Kids were still up when we got home so they got to meet the new babies and name them. We also set up for them to spend one-night in the house as it was 11:30 pm already and their pen in the barn wasn’t finished yet (we are last minute builders/finishers of any project).
#272 received the name Butters and the other one is known as Phil. Unfortunately, Butters (the one my son had to have) only survived a couple days. My son has the great capability of picking the smallest, sickest animals in the world to try and save. Their first night out in the barn Butters must have gotten too cold and we were too late to try and bring him back from hypothermia.
Luckily, I had seen someone selling goats online that didn’t live too far and we were able to get another one who is named Creamer. Knowing Creamers age when we got him lead me to believe that Phil was close to the same age and Butters was probably just a day old or born at the auction house.
These two have kept us on our toes with bottle-feeding and sneezing that a Facebook page I joined made me think we could never keep them alive to begin with and I have no idea how they survive in the wild. But here we are four months later with two happy, healthy, crazy goats that are more like dogs. We will see how this goat world continues in our adventures in homesteading.