Easter Goats

I know that most people think of bunnies when they think of Easter.  I don't have any stories about bunnies, although we did have 2 for a short time.  They just sat in their cage and pooped...a lot.  It was always gross to clean out their cages.  Perhaps that's why we only had them for such a short time.

However, I have a story about goats.  As in...when I was growing up, we raised goats.

Yep, sure did.  I can't remember when we got our first goat.  I just remember having them.  Now before you think I grew up somewhere in Podunk country, let me just say that we only had the goats in the summer.  One of the men in our church was a farmer.  He always had baby goats that needed to be fed and cared for.  Apparently goats are born in the spring?  That may not be true.  I'm going with it though.

So as soon as school was out for the summer, the goats would arrive.  I can't remember how many we had, maybe 4?  We had a pen in our back yard.  Oh yes, the goat pen.  We lived on an acreage so we had plenty of space for a pen.  It was a pretty big area, fenced in and even complete with a little house for them.  So we had goats.  Because they were baby goats, they had to be bottle fed.  Remember those old Pepsi bottles?  Ya know, the big glass ones?  They aren't made anymore.  Something about the environment, although HELLO!  We were reusing them!  We were being "green" before there was an app for that.  But I digress...so each morning we'd get up, make a bottle up for the goats and go feed them.  Their milk was made from powdered milk.  I'm sure there was something else in there too but I was like 8 when this was going on.  My memory is only so good!  We'd have to attach a nipple on to the bottle and off we went.  At the time I never really thought of how large that nipple was.  Now I think, DANG!  Those suckers were huge!  The goats would gulp down that milk like they were starving.  I remember my sister and I going out to feed the goats.  For some reason we got such pleasure out of feeding them.

I've been asked why in the world we had goats.  Honestly, I have no blessed idea.  I'm sure our parents wanted us to learn about livestock or something.  Maybe be comfortable around animals??  Whatever the reason, we raised goats every summer.  We never thought that was odd.  It just...was.  Now I look back and think...huh.  We raised goats.  And fed them milk from Pepsi bottles with HUGE nipples attached.  Perhaps that is a tad...odd.