Our goats

We wanted to take the time to address something that is very important to us after some negative comments and emails we’ve recently received. We’ll warn you that it’s a lengthy post, but we are going to do our best to address all of the concerns as best as possible.

The gist of many of these comments is that we are abusing our goats. At first, it was easy to take these comments to heart and become very defensive and hurt by them, because our goats are a part of our families. But what we’ve realized is that at the end of the day, the people making these comments a) don’t know the full story, and b) just care about the animals, so we have come to appreciate and accept them.

Our goats live on a 40 acre ranch where they roam free and have climate controlled barns that they can come in and out of if it is raining, too hot, or too cold outside for them. They are pets, meaning they are NOT EVER used for milk or meat. They do NOT live in small cages. They are kept separately from the billies to ensure that they are not overbred or bred when they’re too young, and that there is no incestuous breeding.

Roxie, the owner of the ranch, lives and breathes for her goats. She spends the majority of her days (and often pulls all-nighters) caring for the goats. If the nannies have any issues delivering their babies alone, Roxie is there, all hours of the night, to help deliver these babies all while keeping the moms as comfortable as possible. We will spare you the stomach-turning details, but this job is not an easy one to say the least. On top of that, although it does not happen often, occasionally babies are born that require extra attention. If and when a baby is born in poor condition, Roxie and her vet (who is often on call for her all hours of the night) do everything in their power to keep these babies comfortable and alive. This sometimes includes staying up all night, keeping a baby on a heating pad by the fireplace, treating it with medicine or tube-feeding it every couple of hours if it is too weak to eat on its own.

This is the ONLY circumstance that the babies are pulled from their moms at birth before they are weaned – when they are in critical, life-threatening condition and cannot survive on their own. If you see a photo or video of one of our babies that is only a couple of weeks old and is not with its mom, it is because he or she was rescued in one of these emergency situations.

Similarly, local ranchers also bring Roxie all of the baby orphan lambs (orphans meaning their mom kicked them out of the herd at birth). They too can require extra attention since they have not been fed by their moms and require a lot of love and care. If that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, Roxie also just rescued a newborn puppy that was found in a field with no mom or siblings to be found. Hell, she recently drove 2 hours to attempt to rescue a tiny baby squirrel that had been run over by a car. 2 HOURS, Y’ALL. If you’re not getting the point – Roxie cares about her animals.

So, what happens to the baby goats when they are too big to come to GOGA? The babies are either kept at the ranch and join the larger herd, or they are sold as pets once they are weaned. If they are sold as pets, the buyers are carefully vetted to ensure that they are equipped to care for goats properly and are purchasing them with the intention that they will become family pets.

Now, why do we bring our goats to GOGA? Many of you who have come to GOGA have seen that the goats simply enjoy being around people. They play with each other by jumping on things, and humans are no different to them. Most of the babies are bonding with humans at the ranch from the moment they’re born, so they are naturally comfortable around people. They bond with people, and people bond with them. How do we know this? Because when they occasionally stay at our house in Austin, they spend more time pushing on our back door asking to come inside with us, than they do grazing in the backyard where they have free range of all types of delicious greenery. Sometimes, they even win this battle and end up on the couch watching a movie with us, in which case they peacefully fall asleep on our laps. Again, these are our pets. They are no different than a pet dog or cat, and they are treated like so.

Last but not least, to those of you whom have come to GOGA or supported us in any way over the last year and a half, we want to take the time to thank you again. You have helped us donate over $20,000 to local charities and nonprofits, which we could not have done without you. In addition to that, we’re constantly able to make improvements at the ranch, allowing us to spoil our goats more and more every day.

We truly appreciate that so many people are vocal about their concerns for the animals. We do not have the bandwidth to respond to every question individually, but wanted to share the full story to help address these. We will continue to welcome genuine questions and comments on our page, but we will not tolerate any bullying, profanity, or harassment.

We love you all so much!

Love and light,

The GOGA team