I Spent Last Summer Fostering A Baby Goat And It Never Learnt How To Goat

Last summer my favorite doe (shhh! Don't tell the others!) gave birth to the smallest baby goat I had ever seen. She weighed just a smidge over 2 pounds, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in spunk. My goats spend the winter in the barn and move back out to the pasture in the spring. So about a week after my tiny monster arrived, I moved everyone outside. Within seconds though, I realized I had a problem. My best girl's tiny baby walked right through the fence like it wasn't there. Then, when I picked her up, she tried to eat my face. This is a big sign mama isn't making enough milk.

This left me with 2 choices: I could take her and mama back to the barn and keep the two of them there in a stall, or I could raise this baby myself, in my house. Mama Sonnet looked so happy to be out on the grass, and she wasn't paying a lick of attention to her baby, so I decided to be a foster mom to a goat.

I named her Forte because all the goats get musical names and this girl's personality was BIG. It wasn't long though before we had it shortened to Tay and she's been Baby Tay ever since.

I already had a toddler in diapers, so adding a goat to the diapering schedule wasn't that big of a deal. Truly, the diapers ended up being the easy part. Despite their reputation, goats are very delicate animals. Little Tay had me racing to the vet on two separate occasions because she was too sick to eat.

She also got into EVERYTHING. And as she got older, she ate everything too. She would eat literally anything the humans were eating. She swiped cookies from my toddler, jumped on the coffee table to scarf down my lunch, and even got her head stuck in a cheez-it box a few times.

In short, I created a monster. She's back out with her goat friends these days. But she was raised by heathens, and never really learned how to goat. As a result, she's extremely socially awkward. So, I spoil her by bringing inside for visits and taking her hiking. She's still incredibly tiny, and at a year old, she can sit on my lap in the recliner and still leave room for the dog. I learned a lot from my summer with a house goat, mostly that goats need other goats, and that Tay will definitely fight you for a cheez-it.