The big scare

[sammyd]

So Saturday night the wife and I were relaxing after driving for 5 or 6 hours to pick up 3 new goats. She was making some crack about changing my mind about goats 3 goats at a time because last time we bought goats she got 3....
Anyway about 5 minutes after that conversation she starts reading a classified ad out loud for 3 dwarf fainters then I hear her dialing the phone
I freaked out....luckily she was only checking to see if we had any messages phew.

And what is it with goats?
We have a really nice nigerian/lamancha that gives us nice milk in decent quantities, she bought 2 little pygmy things and a small nigerian buck last month and Sat we got a oberhastli and a nubian that look realy nice and have been exposed, plus she picked up this huge nubianx(with papers) billy for free.
Are they really like potato chips, where you can't have just one?
I will admit that they do kinda grow on a guy.
Anybody run a dairy goat operation? How much milk do you have to have to ship? Where do you ship? With the raw milk laws in WI I think we'd have an easier time shipping the milk rather than doing something (other than soap) ourselves.

[goatkid]

Yes, goats are addicting. In the summer of 2000. I got two dairy doelings for pets. I took them to the goat show with the woman I bought them from. One little doeling went blue in both rings and best of breed. I was hooked. By the end of that year, I had about 8 doelings and two does. A year later, I had about 30 goats. Due to only living on 6 acres and rising feed costs, I keep my herd down to 25 goats before the spring kidding season starts. I'm breeding for show quality dairy goats, so I cull some each year, but it's so easy to get attached to them.
As for running a commercial dairy, the woman who got me started in goats used to run a dairy where she shipped raw milk to a cheese plant. She ran a herd of over 200 milking does. She had a 500 gallon holding tank and hauled milk every 3 days in another tank which was on the back ofher truck. It was alot of work and finding enough reliable help was a problem. She sold most of the does and equipment to a family who both milk and make their own cheese. They seem to be doing well.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Yes, goats are addicting. We started with a mini buckling and doeling that we happened across at a lumber yard.

Now we have three milking does: Alpine, Nubian, LaMancha.

I love them to pieces.

[BethW]

Addicting? HA. Let's just say we hadn't gotten home yet with the first two before we decided we needed at least one more.

I love them dearly and they make for fantastic company.