Do you need an inexpensive starter goat for a pastured dairy herd? Abigail's going to be available as soon as Artemesia's kids are born in a month. Perhaps you'd like to take her home with you?

Here are some stats:

• She's an unregistered Saanan x Nigerian cross.
• She's in her milking peak (3 years old).
• She can be bred in spring or fall (and is actually in heat today).
• Milk production is uncertain --- I was learning while milking her last year and know I lowered production a lot. You can see her lactation curve here.
• Milk flavor is very good. I haven't had anyone tell me it tasted goaty, although my brother thought it was almost too rich to drink straight.
  
• She's never been wormed and seems to have both parasite-resistant behavior and genes. (She won't touch any food on the ground, for example.)
• She's never been fed grain (well, except for a head of sorghum once in a blue moon for a treat) and keeps her weight on well with alfalfa pellets, roots, and hay.
• She's moderately well trained. She'll jump up on a milking stanchion on command and only grumbles a bit when you trim her hooves or milk her. She'll walk on a leash (although she pulls a bit if she gets excited) and comes when she's called (as long as there's not something tasty within reach). She follows off leash as long as you're not close to the garden. She handles being tethered well, knows not to get her horns stuck in cattle panels, and understands electrified poultry netting. In her previous life, she was herded with dogs. (Okay, this sounds like she's really well trained. But you haven't met Artemesia --- when our other goat gets ready to chomp down on a raspberry leaf, I just say her name in a moderately stern tone of voice and Artemesia generally obeys me and moves over. My standards are abnormally high.)
• We paid $125 for Abigail and aren't looking to make a profit.
  

And some stats you might find less enticing:

• Both of the times she was bred, Abigail produced a single kid. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if you want to maximize milk-for-people.)
• She has horns and uses them on other goats (although never on humans). This would actually be a plus if you kept Abigail in a large pasture that could see predator pressure. (She's very alert at fending off potential dangers.) But this is a minus if you want to keep her in a very small herd (like ours) with a hornless goat of a submissive variety. Basically, she can be a bully to smaller, weaker animals. (Yes, this is why we're moving her on.)
  

Still interested? Then drop me an email at anna@kitenet.net. I want to line up up someone who's willing to take her as soon as Artemesia's kids are born, so that means you'd need to have your infrastructure in place and at least one companion goat for Abigail. (No, she can't live without goat companionship...and you wouldn't want her to since she'd cry like crazy!)

So, what do you think? Ready for some pastured dairy of your very own?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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