Last year was our first venture into livestock. It’s been a learning experience and I encourage everyone to at least try it at some point. We were blessed by our first goat purchase being out of someone’s backyard, they were very helpful and informative about what is healthy and what is not, and yes, theirs were healthy.
We’ve bought other goats from commercial operations, turns out we bought some problems but nothing debilitating. We’ve bought from other midrange production farms that took hours to get to but provided quality doelings (not yet bred girls) at a reasonable price.
This recent experience was different. Text the guy from Craigslist, he confirms most of our questions. Good price and good deal. So we load up the kids, drive the hour out there. Find we find out the seller doesn’t live here, he just bases his sales here because it’s close to Fort Worth and brings his stock down from Oklahoma.
Friendly guy, very happy to talk about his animals and his extensive experience and credentials with livestock. Hail-fellow-well-met approach to selling.
But as we listen, we hear about his problems with his herd. How the worms are always there and no one can get rid of them. How this pathogen is always there too, but these ones are healed up…nope, nope, nope.
When you run your own operation, you are responsible for what comes on the property. The easiest way to prevent pestilence in the pasture is to never bring it onsite. After watching the final doeling emit a bloody stool, we said no, thank you and left.
It’s a good word, the word No. I hope my son’s and daughters learn it early. Better to make a round trip and pickup pizza (when did a large pizza get so small??) on the way home then bring hours of problems and death back to the home.