Nellie!

No, not that Nellie!   I'm talking about a different Nellie.  Nellie our new dairy goat.  Tricia had been reading about dairy goats and thinking about getting one.  Lo and behold she made a few telephone calls and found one for sale.  We made the trip to a nearby town and met with the owners, looked at their goats and asked a lot of questions.

We decided to go ahead and purchase Nellie and we brought her home earlier this week.  She's a Nubian dairy goat.  These goats have very high butterfat content in the milk.  Goat milk is easily digestible, has low lactose, is virtually allergen free, and is delicious.  An interesting thing about goat milk is that it is naturally homogenized, meaning that, unlike cow's milk, the cream in goat's milk doesn't rise to the top but remains suspended.  

Nellie, our new Nubian dairy goat

She has interesting markings on her coat that kind of remind me of the sweaters that Cliff Huxtable used to wear on the Cosby show.  She's a very friendly goat with big, floppy ears and she is expecting a kid in a few weeks.  Goats frequently have twins, but Nellie doesn't appear to be big enough to be having twins, but we'll find out soon.  If you notice on Nellie's neck, she has two wattles.  Wattles are hair covered skin appendages of flesh hanging down off of her neck.  They really serve no function, but are kind of neat looking.

If you look closely, you can tell that she has a little white beard.  She's very curious and has quite a personality.  The cows welcomed her to the pasture after a while and she's settling in as part of the family now.

I have a few weeks prior to Nellie having her kid, but I've got to look for some plans for building a milking table for her and start on that project.


Nellie is proud to be an American

On her right side, she has a large white patch that is different from her left side.  This afternoon we looked out and saw Nellie walking through the yard.  She had escaped!  We went and got her back into the pasture, but figured out that she had climbed up on top of the woodpile and jumped over the fence.  I've got to fix that little problem tomorrow.  We can't have Nellie exploring the neighborhood.

Goats are browsers which means they like to eat high up on shoots and leaves from shrubs and trees. In fact, I frequently see her climbing up the fence and nibbling on oak leaves or craning her neck and eating the lilies along the neighbor's fence row.

When the kids were younger, they showed meat goats, but this is our first experience with a dairy goat.  We'll be on a little learning curve for a while and will keep you posted as Nellie kids and we start milking.