Goat Ops
goatops.com
goatops.com
They give a nice rhythm to the day: I greet them shortly after rising and lock them up as the sun sets. We have daily conversations while I milk them and we gossip about the chickens.
The switch has forced me to hone my construction and machinery skills, but I still enjoy finding ways to slip tech solutions into my setup.
I recently started working again in tech remotely, but I'm doing non-profit work which is in much greater alignment with my personal values. I'm a lot happier and a good part of it is due to the goats.
It's not for everyone, but I've enjoyed the change in pace and outlook. And the fresh milk.
"I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
I think a lot of people in tech have pastoral dreams that may not be solidly based in reality, but as someone who grew up with a herd of sheep, it's still pretty attractive even when you know what's involved :)
We have 6 goats and 13 chickens. We live in a town of 3.5k. It is large enough to have the necessities like grocery and hardware stores. At the same time, there are less than 2 dozen people living within half of a mile of me.
We can get to a town of 11k in 20 minutes and a city of a quarter million in 35, so most everything we would want is accessible, but we need to plan out trips a bit. The only thing I'm really missing is access to a variety of cuisines. There is but one Ethiopian restaurant within a hour, 3 Indian places, and no Burmese. The one Chaat place we knew of closed during the pandemic. But we do have 7 bars serving the same Americana within 10 minutes of us!
Interesting note: I went to a farm stay last weekend. In New South Wales, blackberry thornbushes are pest plants in farms. And what the smaller farms do is they rent goats from people who do goats-as-a-service for a few days. The Gaas people will come in to a farm, install small fences around the blackberry thornbushes and set the goats to business.
I see 200 goat herds utilized by towns in Marin County to clear various slopes/hillsides, etc.
But you may have to spend more than 4 hours upgrading your wires because of a goat.
(I speak from personal experience with electric fences)
They do lock up sometimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_goat though they quickly reboot and are back in business.
They're great for first line customer response, provide invaluable counseling services to the other employees (goats are never confused about priorities), and even help with paperwork.
Get the sales guys high enough and they might convince management to try the "new special rare imported coffee beans", even. That can backfire and you find yourself having to source more pellets, or hire more goats.
I'm still not entirely sure which meaning of "kids" this one uses, and whether the ambiguity is intentional.
Yup I see your point.
I'm pretty sure dairy farmers don't shoot cows in the head if they get sick, with the same carefree shrug I do when I terminate Kubernetes pods and nodes, but maybe they do?
Dairy farmers tend to be very practical about putting down animals that are past a certain point. If a 7 year old cow needs $N of surgery to live, but she can realistically only be expected to give another $N*0.5 worth of milk in her life, she's hamburger.
There is now: https://www.cronkshawfoldfarm.co.uk/videocalls
It seems like a lot of work. And she only has a maximum of around two dozen at a time. I grew up on cattle farms and cows are much easier.
Soaping and showing seem like a labor of love.
We get away from the city and do this quite often.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...
> You don't need any special utilities to delete a goat that is not empty.
xD
One of them would eventually get an infection and his penis swole all the way up. It was a mess, and we had to have the vet euthanize him. I have never cried so hard in my life because he was the lovable and affectionate one. He wasn't awkward, and he'd come up and bear his head in your chest and let you hug the shit out of him.
The other boy was more awkward but still lovable, and we maintained his health with on and off urine burns and a variety of issues. He would eventually succumb to arthritis.
The girl was awful, and only I was able to love on her. She was super aggressive to my wife and every single female visitor. I don't know why, and I tried everything the vet had us do.
I love goats very much, but I do recommend that if you go in then go all in and get a herd. Develop a strong relationship with a vet. Prepare for loss as herd animals meant for milk production may have bad genetics. Don't trust small time farmers to have good genetics, and make sure you get a vet that knows what they are doing with respect to castration as timing is crucial.
My advice is go for with fiber producing goats as they may last longer, but they are most likely not as lovable since the sheering process is super traumatic.
Hosts content on top of an image showing fence posts...
where the RBDMS guy is like ... that's it. I quit. I'm going to go be pig farmer ..the sweet smell of pig shit is so much better than putting up with yours.
I laughed way too hard at that video...somedays though I think I'd love to have goats. Esp. baby goats they're so cute. I also love goats milk and have a dairy "issue" (I still eat it but my tummy doesn't like me after).
There is a steep learning curve. It's a lot of hard work. The pay is not great. You have to be the right kind of person, and it helps to already have capital so you don't start out in debt.
In my case, my wife is a large animal vet so our vet bills are minimal.
I strongly dissuade anyone considering this change from just quitting their day job, buying some land, and starting from boot. Go work on someone else's farm first, or start as a side gig. Figure out what you are doing and where your market is. You can go bankrupt very easily and surprisingly quickly — one disease gets into your herd because you didn't take the right bio safety precautions, or your feed gets contaminated and you have an abortion storm, and you're out almost all of your capital, and the characteristic time period for making more income is - of course - a year.
I have absolutely loved the change. I spend my day alternating between coding and farm tasks. It's a great balance to my day.
We went from 2 miniature dairy goats on our 400 square meters urban home, to rural after they had kids. It'd be very hard to more than 2 adult goats on a city block, noise issues.
I think the droughts and fencing and killing would be an impressive thing to do as a farmer, but not for me. I do see a market around Airbnb, I know a few hobby farmers who get far more from their Airbnb. Also WeWork would be interesting to test.
[1] https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-au...
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