There is a time for goats, and a time... not for goats?

[ladyadeone]

>
As of tomorrow my family will be goatless for the foreseeable future. It's rather strange to think about, and I know I shall miss them. I already do, to be honest.

Come next spring it would be seven years we've had a little "Farm". But the decision has been reached by all of us that the era of goats is over. Family members growing up and branching

Comments

[valiantarcher]

*hugs* Glad to. :)

Ah, I see. *hugs* We did sell our cows, but we knew that all but possibly one was just going to be killed for meat (there's definitely a difference between slaughtering and eating them yourselves and just knowing that someone else will, though). And we slaughtered all the steers we had too. My parents were worried about us getting attached to the steers when they were born, so they all had names to remind us of their eventual purpose (Oreo, Smack, Chip [off the old block---he was an escape artist, just like his mama], and a few others that I don't remember right now). ;))
But, we never got that close to our cows, not like you do with goats. We didn't have to milk them or help with calving (our cows always just went off and calved by themselves), so we didn't get as attached to them.
*coughs* And that was pretty much all about me and our history with cows, and not about you and the goats. *hugs* We're very much meat eaters too, and I'm pretty sure if we ever had goats they'd end up in the freezer too. *hugs again* Is it still really odd to not have the goats around?

Hehe...it depends on the cow, I think! I've heard they're a bit less stubborn in general (though, we didn't name one of our cows Bossy for nothing! ...then again, we weren't real inventive with Heffy (heifer), either. And Bessie was just named that since it's probably the most generic cow name and it's close to Bossy :P ), and based on my few encounters with goats, that makes sense.
*coughs* That was actually a pretty bad analogy. :"> Several is right, though---at the most we had four dogs at one time, but for the past few years it's just been two, and now one. All black labs, and all very sweet, if a bit wacky at times. ;)) (And our dogs had much more inventive names than our cows, lest you think we had horrible naming skills---Tegan, Charis, Dixie (...okay, this was her name when we got her, and we never actually changed it), Merlin, and Nimyue (Nina for short, and actually for all intents and purposes). Then again, my parents had far more say in the dogs' names than they did in the cows', so...)

[ladyadeone]

We have friends who often eat their buck kids, so they name them things like Burrito, Stew... We never tried that, but it probably does help a little.

It's still pretty odd, actually, coming home and not seeing them watching me when I look over at their pen. Every time I open my window shade their pen is right there and I automatically glance over to see what they're up to.

If left up to the kids, pet names can become shockingly cheesy. As evidenced in half our goat names and the names of all the dogs I know... :D Our goats had such names as Genghis, Subred, Winkle (the good ones), Sugar, Bluebell, and Buttercup (the unimaginative ones - though Buttercup came to us all ready named).

[valiantarcher]

;)) Either that, or we really weren't that attached to our steers, which would make sense.

*hugs* It always takes a while to adjust to not having an animal (or animals) around.

Of course! ;)) (We also used to have cats, and they had very unimaginative names---Sundae (tortoise shell cat, I think?), Cuddly, Midnight (yep, black), Beauty, Cookies (black-and-white), Ginger (...ginger-coloured), Elizabeth (because she had a ruff of fur around her collar---my mom actually came up with that name, which explains the increase in creativity), and such.) Well, at least you had a mix in goat names---I particularly like Genghis. ;))