Looking for a hobby to distract us from all of the projects and work my wife and I were bouncing around the idea of making and selling goat cheese. It seemed like a nice excuse to get some interesting animals and maybe earn a little extra money. A friend of ours in town had some goats he said he could lend us for awhile to see if we liked it, so we took him up on his offer.

We had the concrete block building in back that we use for storage, but there was a lot of extra room in it and it seemed like a good place to use as a place for the goats to sleep. I partitioned the inside back of the storage building off with plywood so they could use this door to move in and out of the building:

We put in some posts and fencing to keep the goats somewhat contained. This isn’t really enough room for the goats but it would work temporarily:

After getting this together our friend brought over three goats, some dry goat food and several bales of hay for them to eat. Meet Maggie and her two unnamed offspring:

Maggie seemed vaguely annoyed with the move but the two young ones were having a good time…

Over the next few weeks we all got more used to each other. Our dog and the goats seemed to come to an understanding: if the dog stopped smelling the goats’ butts then Maggie would stop trying to headbutt the dog.

Our yard had quite a few weeds the goats had a keen interest in eating, so to give them a little exercise we let them roam the yard outside of their enclosure for a couple of hours a day. Being goats they liked climbing anything they could…

They had fun exploring both the yard…

and the house:

I was glad Maggie was getting more comfortable with us, but I could have done without her wandering through the dining room one day when she was able to push open the back door:

Our cat was less than impressed with this merry goat band…

Our fence wasn’t exactly free of holes, so eventually the goats found ways to get out of the yard. Here they are across the street sampling those weeds:

But they always seemed to come back at the end of the day…

In the end we decided not to pursue the goat cheese idea. It was fun having them around, but the goats had a habit of getting into trouble at every possible opportunity. The babies regularly got their heads or horns stuck in the fence trying to nibble some tempting bit of greenery, resulting in them complaining loudly until I came and freed them. One afternoon Maggie decided to chew up every inch of wiring on my trailer in the back yard, which was more than a little frustrating, and the babies enjoyed bashing their heads against our neighbor’s wood fence whenever they could, which was unsettling and loud.

After about six months we returned the goats to their owner, who had the space and time needed for these entertaining animals. Here endeth the experiment.

Our cat was happy.