The Gang From Montana

Whelp – this turned into quite a production! I noticed Carpenter Ranch had a beautiful buckling for sale with some bloodlines I coveted. Most importantly, he had flawless breed character (long, bell-shaped ears and a big ol’ Roman nose). My research (read “stalking”) of the Carpenter Ranch herd over the years has taught me that this is a dominant breed trait in their line, and it will very likely carry over to any kids from this buckling.  I am focusing on breed character this season to get my herd looking very “Nubian”, and decided I had room in my herd such a good-looking boy. I contacted the seller and learned that Carpenter Ranch is liquidating their herd to focus on dogs. I messaged my friend Noriko over at Opus 7 and told her, in case she wanted to purchase any of the goats while I was coordinating transport from MT. At this point, Noriko decided she really liked one of the bucklings, too! We got a plan in place to get these boys to Colorado. Well, then the seller wanted to know what she could do to also sell the us the boys’ dams. These are really nice does, at a great price, but transporting adults is a different ball of wax than transporting young bucklings. To add the does we were looking at made about a total of $800 in transport costs. THEN the transporter had to cancel because of a family emergency….It was looking like we were going to have forfeit our deposits and testing costs, but…Noriko and her minivan to the rescue! She decided to squeeze in a trip to MT to pick up these 4 and bring them home. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but our friend Jennifer at GTO asked if Noriko could bring back a doe also! That makes 5 in a minivan, for those of you still with me. Noriko set her date, the seller got health certificates and TB tests coordinated, and we had a plan. Or so we thought.  Within a few days, the seller contacted us to tell us that a buyer for two of her doelings had to back out. One of them was my buckling’s twin sister. Noriko and I laughed and added them to to the trip. If you’re counting, that’s SEVEN!

Seven goats in a minivan! AH AH AH!

From this point on, it was fairly uneventful. Noriko and her husband Mike took a couple days to get to Carpenter Ranch, detouring through Yellowstone to take in the sights. They spent the night in MT, loaded up the goats early and made it home in just under 9 hours. All the buyers rendezvoused at Opus 7 and picked up our goats. My three new goats Supernova, Terranova, and May are settling in nicely here at Size Matters.