The goats are here!

The goats have arrived!  You might recall that once we moved to our present home (about 6 months ago) we began making plans for a large garden and some animals.  We got baby chicks immediately and had great success with them right from the start.  Our hens have been healthy, the girls have enjoyed taking care of them, and we now have more eggs than we can eat.  The chicken success made us brave and we decided to tackle a bigger, more complicated animal.  We researched goats and decided on Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats.  And - fortunately - we found a breeder relatively close to us.  We visited the baby goats once when they were a few weeks old.  And then, last Saturday, Mark and daughter #1 made the trek back to the goat farm to pick up our "kids".

Unloading the goats.  The girls could hardly wait to see them!

As you can imagine, choosing names for the goats was a hot topic around here.  In my opinion, I had lots of really cool ideas for names (Mark was in agreement on most of my suggestions) but the girls kept shooting me down... Finally, someone had the brilliant idea of naming them for 2 characters from one of our family-favorite classic television shows.

So, we're pleased to introduce "Lucy" and "Ethel".

Ethel is on the left, Lucy is on the right.

We borrowed a large dog crate from some friends and transported them home in the back of Mark's car.  Apparently, we have goats who are very tolerant of car trips - not a single incident on the way home :)

We may have gotten the names wrong... Ethel is the nutcase - always climbing on the girls and generally more mischievous than Lucy.  Isn't that backward?

Mark called when they were 10 minutes away, so I grabbed the camera and took the little girls down to the goat shed and waited for them to arrive.  Such excitement!

Exploring their new pen - they went straight for the feed!

Everything is going well so far.  Lucy and Ethel love to play and have human guests in their pen.  They really are cute and sweet (in a totally goat way).  I'm not a huge animal lover - we don't even have a dog - but I think that them being small really helps.  Smaller always seems to be cuter.

Though this is a cute picture, I was probably saying, "don't put your face on the goat!"

So, the whole point of the goats is milk, but they're not quite ready for that yet.  We've got several months to wait before they are ready for the next step on the road to becoming milk-producers.  For now, they'll be entertainment for the girls - and 2 more mouths to feed.

They love climbing around on these stumps Mark put in the pen.