Meet Chester and Norbit

 

 

Meet Barbara's goats, Chester and Norbit. Norbit is the smaller, more social of the two, and can be hand fed. They like almost anything, but of available local foods, they favor privet leaves and berries. They have a fenced area where they roam free but sometimes they are staked by their favorite privet bushes.
I had a goat once and originally employed Daisy to clean up the privet behind the barn. The longer she was with me, the better I liked her. She seemed to reflect me in many ways. Sometimes she was ornery for no reason, she did not always come when she was called, and she preferred strawberries above all else. I could read her emotions like a book and they said that rain really disgusted her. She would stare at me with her ears sticking straight out, as if I were to blame for the unsatisfactory weather.
While she lived with me she became the mother of twins, and she was a very good and careful Mother. Although she used to sleep with the dog before the twins were born, she took an active dislike to the dog afterward. She would butt at the dog and run her away. This perplexed the dog and she kept trying to be friends, but to no avail. I eventually found a home for the twins because I did not want to start a goat farm. Daisy cried for a week in the most pitiful bellows when I took the twins away. She whimpered for another week. Having grown up on a farm where calves were routinely separated from their mothers, you would think it would not affect me, but it most certainly did. Her grief was palatable, and I knew I had caused it.
It turned out that Daisy was right about dogs. She died when a rottweiler tore out her throat.