I'll pipe in.
My son wanted goats really bad, too. He saved up his money and bought two Toggenburg does - one nice and showy already in milk and one pregnant doe that was more "dairy". He kept them at the 4H ranch. I drove him there every day to feed, water, and milk. We milked only once a day. Driving there and back twice a day would have annoyed me.
We moved to the country and that's when the big planning, problem solving, and $$$ came into the picture. We, too, tied them out. That does not work. It's dangerous. Just don't do it. We built a 12x6 goat shed with slanted roof and slatted half door. We used cattle panel and T-bars (metal fence stakes) for a 25x30 pen. We sunk treated post into the ground and put up a pallet gate between them.
We hung a horse hay rack inside the pen for them. They eat alfalfa/orchard grass hay. It's $14/bale. Alternatively, they should eat straight alfalfa grass hay. In milk, they get 4 cups of sweet feed while on the stanchion. That's twice a day.
There is an English walnut tree in their pen which they skylined immediately. We wanted them to graze to cut down the cost of keeping them. We looked into all kinds of fencing. It was all sooo expensive. We settled on electric netting. We LOVE it. Even our naughtiest goat stay within it.
We put the netting around our orchard so that the goats could freely walk in and out of their goat shed/feeding pen. They skylined all the orchard trees and even keep the poison oak back. The orchard looks lovely now. They keep the grass mowed so that makes it look even nicer and I don't worry so much about rattle snaked being able to hide in tall grass.
Their orchard is about 1 - 1 1/2 acres and we still give them hay. We now have 3 does about to kid plus one buck. Yup, you do need a buck to keep the milk going. It's called "refreshing". The buck is not cheap. Most people find a goat that belongs to someone else to breed to. Sometimes they can't find one and go a year w/o milk if the breed they have is a seasonal breeder.
I highly recommend buying a doeling that is young enough to bottle feed. It's temperament will be MUCH better than one that was not. Sometimes, I HATE the does that were not bottlefed. They're flightly, naughty, are escape artists, and then, oye! Good luck catching them - the little boogers!
I, too, like the Fiasco farms website. It's great. I get all our supplies from
www.caprinesupply.com and
www.cheesemaking.com .
For milking, I have a stripping cup, stainless steel milking pail, Povidone-Iodine surgical scrub and paper towels for disinfecting teats before milking, spray for closing the teats after milking to prevent bacteria from going up and infecting the doe, metal filter funnel, dairy filters, and 1/2 gallon milk jugs to fill with filtered milk which then goes straight to my deep freeze for fast cooling.
Milking is a chore, no doubt about it. I'll be milking 3 does twice a day this Spring for at least 9 months and I'm not looking forward to it. You really are tied down when you have animals to milk. I wish I had a milking machine but they're incredibly expensive - well over $1,000 and often over $2,000.
Kids can milk off their mothers but it does not always go well. Mothers might reject them or injure them. I really think bottle feeding it best - it's a headache but it can pay off in the long run. When your goat is 150 - 200 lbs, you'll be glad you can manage her because you bottle fed her.
My son's doeling nursed for about 9 months! She just would not give up and her mama let her. I read that is not good for the doeling. It can retard her ability to give a good amount of milk in the future - something about her ruminant gut not being as developed. It's tied to milk production somehow.
Anyway, I'm with the others. Sometime, you will have goats. My son picked up on something real quick after he joined 4H. As he watched the kids around him for a year or two, he told me "Mom, I know how kids can get ANY pet they want". When I asked him how (I already knew the answer) he said "Just join 4H".
It's true, too. I've met so many parents that were dead set against their kids getting a pet. I've seen several kids make deals with their parents that if they join 4H and stick with it, that they reconsider in 6 months. Well, after about 2 or 3 months, it's the parent who is DYING to buy their child that rabbit, goat, cow, pig, horse, etc that they were completely against just a little while ago. I've seen it again and again. lol
That's my tip to you. Just don't tell your mom you got the idea from me.
Oh, I forgot to add a pic of my son and one of his kids. I was across the country when his doe went into labor. He and his dad found the first kid newly born. While my husband ran across the ranch to get towels and such, my son (8 at the time) helped his doe deliver the second kid. You can see that he is very proud of his kids and rightly so.
Other might disagree. I've never had any experience with them.
