Yes, we got goats! No kidding (See what I did there?). Last week, we adopted two baby Nigerian Dwarf brothers from a local goat-loving lady here in Southwest Michigan. They are SO cute and SO sweet! I honestly had no idea little goats are this sweet. I’m in love! Meet Bam-Bam and Bowser Junior (named after my Mario-Kart-loving-son).
Maybe two-ish years ago, my husband and I started chatting about adding more livestock to our little farmyard, but it was more a dream of “someday” than “right now.” We had just moved into our new home, and I was pregnant with our fourth child. I had my sights on some sheep or a couple Juliana pigs. He was up for just about anything. At the time, we were content with our newest chicks and ducklings adding to our flock, but then a nearby animal rescue had a Juliana pig in need of a home. We built a pig pen and thought we would take him, but he wound up adopted before we got the chance to meet him.
Twenty-six months later, here we are more settled in, the human kids are a little older, and a global pandemic had us home and thinking about what we’ve been waiting for that we don’t need to wait on any longer. We got a puppy in early March, right before things shut down, and because she’s very energetic and requires a lot of training, we decided to hold off on the Juliana pigs. I want to train them to be therapy pigs, and I just can’t handle training a puppy and pigs all at the same time.
Instead, we began looking into alpacas. I called a local Alpaca farmer that I met last Fall, and she gave me a lot of info and answered loads of my questions. She invited us to come to her annual shearing, pandemic masks and all, and that was quite an experience! My kids fell in love with the cute and quirky critters, but we ultimately all agreed that we weren’t ready to take on alpaca ownership.