Nadine the Rescued Goat

I decided to call the goat Nadine.  It suits her.  After my original post, My husband and I were able to catch Nadine and put her in the Duck's night pen to keep her warm through the night, as it was predicted to get bitterly cold.  The ducks are staying in the garage until the weather goes above 30 degrees again.  They are board and upset with me, but there isn't anything I can do to make them happy. 

I am now in the process of trying to find someone to take Nadine off my hands.  I do not have the facilities or the money to keep her.  Hopefully, I can get in touch with the farmer who first stopped by.  One of my neighbors must have his number.  Right now she is in our sub-basement out of the cold, but she is not happy.  Wish me luck!

The Curious Incident of the Stray Goat

Yesterday, I spotted some curious droppings around the garage of a sort I'd not seen since I was a kid.  I told my husband they looked like goat droppings, but they must be from the deer that come out to the field across the street.  They had come to eat some discarded oats and corn left over from the dumping of my ducks water buckets (sometimes I think more goes into the bucket than into them!).  It really didn't make much sense either way, but we decided to stop dumping the water buckets outside the garage to avoid more droppings.

Then this morning I got up to feed the ducks and discovered a nanny goat on my patio.  She was shy, but looked very hungry so I gave her the left over duck feed I was about to dump and then gave her about 3 cups of rolled oats and a bucket of water.  Thinking to bring her inside the fence until I could locate her owner, I went inside to get a rope, only to discover I had none.  I went back outside and she was gone.  I thought perhaps she had headed back to the farm up the street where I thought she probably had come from to begin with.

Later this afternoon, there was a knock at the door.  A man was standing on my porch and he asked if I was the one who called about the goat.  I said I had not called about a goat, but that I had seen one this morning.  He then pointed around the corner of the house and asked, "Is that goat yours?".  I turned in the direction he was pointing and saw the nanny goat pretty as you please staring at me from within my fence.  I started laughing and told him it wasn't my goat, but that was the one I had fed that morning.  She must have climbed my fence when I was looking for a rope and went to the backyard where I didn't see her.  He said someone had called him thinking he had lost one of his goats, but he said it wasn't his.  He said the other goat owners he knew of weren't missing one either, and they didn't know where this one had come from but it had been roaming around the valley for some time.  He offered to come back with his truck and a pen and to take her in until he could find the owner.

After he left, we gave her some more oats and I snapped some photos.  She seemed content in our yard, but the ducks were not happy.  They saw her eating out of their bowls and drinking their water and it upset them greatly.  The goat seemed indifferent to them and to us.  She finished the oats and then proceeded to jump our fence and run up the road.  That is how we discovered the place she was getting inside.  There is a low spot in the fence by the patio that she was climbing up on the brick then jumping over into a small flower bed then down to the patio.  I tried to catch up with her but she went into a neighbor's back yard and headed for the woods.  We stopped our pursuit in hopes she would come out if left alone.  The farmer returned with two friends in his truck.  We told him of her escape and where we last saw her.  He was confident they could catch her and we believed him.  We went about our day thinking all was well.

After checking the weather report, we realized we needed to get the duck's pen in the garage ready for them to spend the night inside.  When we went out to start our work, we discovered the nanny was back in our yard searching for her food.  I filled the bottom of a three gallon tub with oats and placed it on our front porch for her.  She ate some and then jumped the fence again, this time laying down to chew her cud on the patio.  We planned to herd her into the fence this evening and then to block up the part she was jumping over, but when we went outside, she was gone.  It is getting bitterly cold, so she probably went to find shelter.  If she returns tomorrow, as I am sure she will, perhaps we can block her in until we can find a place to take her.  I'll post an update when I get more news!