Ramona

When I first planned on getting goats I did research on a few breeds and planned on getting Nubian goats. I loved their big floppy ears, roman noses, and sometimes even spots. However, when it came time to actually get goats, Nubians for a reasonable price were pretty scarce. Thus, Fern and Amos of unknown origins arrived on the farm instead. After having Fern and Amos for a couple months I started thinking about Nubians again. It seemed like one more goat would round out the little herd nicely, and I couldn't get the idea of having a little, spotted Nubian doeling out of my head.

I looked on craigslist for several weeks without any luck, and on a whim changed the search to Kansas City. There was an ad for a couple doelings out of a spotted buck. I emailed the person, and she responded that they did have a little spotted doeling they were selling. Attached to the email was this picture:

I was sold. She looked exactly like what I was picturing: long floppy ears and covered in “moonspots”. Her name was Ramona Pinto. She had been bottled raised by the woman’s five children since birth. In fact, Ramona frequently slept in her daughter's bed. The woman explained that when Ramona was born she was very small, and refused to drink from her mother, so they had bottled raised her while her siblings stayed on their mom. She said that they would have liked to keep her, as she was probably the
sweetest goat they had ever raised, but they were selling all of the goat kids this year to raise money for an international adoption. Now I really couldn’t say no!

I met them near the end of April to pick up Ramona. She was tiny for her age and very sweet. Ha, made my other goats seem very badly behaved! It was a little tricky at first. She much preferred being around humans than the other goats. If she saw me outside she would cry and then sneak out of the fence, but gradually she became more comfortable with the other goats and less attached to me. Although she still liked to come in the house at every opportunity for the first couple of weeks. It was kind of fun to have a little goat chewing her cud under the table while eating dinner, and she would even run back outside to go pee.

I realized that part of Ramona’s sweetness may be that she is a little simple minded. I don’t think she is going to win any goat IQ contests, but she sure is a fun little goat to have around.