Pictures From Sundae's Mom

We have been raising goats here on Shiloh Prairie Farm for quite awhile. I greatly appreciate and want to thank every person who has taken home a goat or dog from our farm, without their support we could not continue to do what we do here on the farm.

One of these wonderful people is Sundae's Mom. It is always a little hard to let any animal I have raised go, but bottle babies are especially difficult. Sundae was a bottle baby we had born on the farm in 2007. She was as sweet of a little goat as there ever was and would come running every time she seen me, begging to be picked up. Sundae was certainly a cute baby, with her extra long basset hound ears and little determined chin. Jamey named her Sundae because when she was born she had a chocolate colored head and markings on her little white body that reminded him of a chocolate sundae. I guess he was in the mood for ice-cream that day and Sundae should feel lucky she did not end up with Chunky Monkey as a name, but since I do get to name more of the goats than he does I agreed with his name for her. So Sundae she was named.

As is the nature of a farm, you just can't keep them all no matter how cute they are, and they are all cute. Summer was coming to an end and we had the prospect of a long winter ahead, it was time to cut the herd back a little. Second only to losing a beloved pet and raising one's own food, one of the most difficult things to do on a farm is deciding who to sell to keep the herd numbers in check and the farm going.

These are the decisions one must make with their head and not with their heart, which is something I admit I often struggle with. When cutting a goat herd back, my head told me it made more sense to let the weanlings go and keep the does old enough to breed that fall. Sundae was one of those weanlings that year. I also had to consider the fact since she did not have a mom to stand up for her in the goat herd she was being pushed around and pushed out of the shelter by the other goats, so a home in a smaller herd might be what was best for her. I had to add her name to the list of goats to sell that year.

I put Sundae on the sale page of our website along with the others on my difficult list and advertised that we had goats for sale online. A lady that was starting a Boer goat herd emailed me about Sundae not long after I put her on our website and asked for front, side & rear view pictures; I gladly obliged. Several emails and a phone call later the arrangements was made for the lady to pick Sundae up on a certain day. I didn't have a definite time but she said she would call when she was close, by late that evening it became clear the lady must have changed her mind. I am only human and I admit I was a little peeved to be stood up, left hanging by the phone all day with not even the consideration of a phone call or email.

I never heard from that lady again but a few days later I saw an ad online from another lady looking for a couple Nubian bottle goats for pets. Sundae was weaned by this time, but she was a former bottle baby and still had all the lovable sweetness of one. She also wasn't a Nubian, though she wasn't quite a fullblood Boer either so it was possible there might have been a little bit of Nubian in her background somewhere, her ears were certainly long enough! I took a chance and emailed the lady, whose name was Rebecca. At first I did not think she was going to be interested since Sundae wasn't exactly what she was looking for. I am always a little cautious of selling goats as pets to just anybody because you never know if it is just a fad for them that will fade to leave the poor goat with a long and lonely existence, tied up in a barren yard neglected somewhere. That is a much worse fate than a quick & considerate death for a meat goat destined for the freezer in my humble opinion. Not that Sundae ever had any risk of that since she had so expertly wormed her way into my heart with her happy little bottle grunts and milk mustaches.

As it would turn out I did not need to worry about Rebecca, she had other goats and sheep, as well as experience with raising them. Rebecca did decide to come out to the farm and take Sundae home. Over the years we have had some truly wonderful customers buy goats from us, all people you just know would take great care of any animal they own. Rebecca was however the first person to actually bring a small photo album of her other animals to show us. I really enjoyed that and when I saw the picture of an obviously very loved and spoiled sheep welcomed into her home I was never so happy to have been stood up in my life. I knew Sundae was going to a really great home with a kind and special owner. Maybe it was a little bit of fate that Sundae ended up going home with Rebecca in the end, but I am so glad she did.

Rebecca has been kind enough to send me some updates on Sundae over the last year and a half. She recently sent me a couple pictures of Sundae, my how she has grown! Thanks for the pictures Rebecca!