Mystery Valley Ranch ~ My House of Critters

Where The Story Started

Our family started with an Alpine and three Pygmy goats. When we started they were to help keep the weeds down and for pets. We raised, bred and saved many goats. Then as our family began to grow with babies of our own we decided to sell the goats, pull up roots and move to a new house.

Then you move this story along nine years and you end up where we are now. Our then one year old daughter, our Monkey, is now ten years old and is helping us to get back into goats. Monkey has now started 4-H and has joined the goat project. I think I am enjoying raising the goats as much as my daughter is. Goose can't wait to raise her own goat.

The Kids Have Arrived

We decided to have our daughter start the goat project. While we were looking around trying to find a Boer goat for our daughter's goat project, we received an email telling us that one of the local breeders had a young kid - a bottle baby - that needed a new home. As it turned out; the dam came down with pneumonia on top of having mastitis in one of her udders. Our family talked about this new challenge and decided it would be a great one to start together.

In all of our previous experiences of raising goats we have not had to bottle feed a kid before now. The first night had us worried; we had a hard time getting the goat to suckle on the bottle.

The next morning was a huge success. It is true what they say; they do eat better having a very empty stomach on them. This first goat was Nitro.

After this year with Nitro we decided it wasn't too bad and decided to keep raising bottle babies. As of right now we have raised 10 bottle babies and have kept half of them as breeders.