“Yes,” I said, before the woman selling the house had even finished her question, before my boyfriend could stop me.

“Yes,” I said louder, as she looked at me with relief and he reeled in shock.

Two months later, we moved into our new home, an eighty-five-year-old farmhouse nestled between agricultural plains and ancient forest in southern Québec, armed with good intentions and a copy of Raising Goats for Dummies.

Our first month as goat owners was nerve-racking, but we settled into a routine. Each crisp fall night, we followed the previous owner’s instructions and fed the six goats a small amount of grain, divided equally between six red buckets hanging from the fence. Goats love grain, and soon the goats loved us.

Unfortunately, goats do not love sharing. This led to our first spot of goat trouble.

Peach is the queen of our tiny herd. Perhaps this is because she is mother to four of the others. Or perhaps it is because of the large horns that curve gracefully toward her back, horns she frequently uses to her advantage. Either way, when we poured out the grain, Peach smashed lesser goats—her own progeny—hither and thither and took what she wanted. This triggered a trickle-down of body smashing and furious bleating as the rest of the goats fought for scraps. We, a couple of city-slickers from Montréal, were horrified, convinced the goats would all be maimed and we’d be bankrupted by vet bills before end of year. But a quick check of Dummies (and the internet, when we didn’t believe the book) told us that this was goats being goats. We decided not to change their routine. Thus, evenings remained very stressful, prompting a lot more shouting and crying—mostly from me.

Then the long, dark and bitterly cold Canadian winter rolled in, and we worried about warmth. Sure, they had thick, fluffy coats and a lovely Dummies-approved three-sided goat house, but it didn’t seem like enough. Should we put in a heater? Or tack a canvas flap over the open side? Knit them sweaters? Dummies told us no, no and no. It said a well-fed goat is a warm goat, since they generate heat while digesting food. We increased their grain and widened the access to the hay feeder, just in case.

By spring, our goats were round as Laughing Buddhas. Even our hay man advised us to cut back on hay. We followed his advice and forced them to graze in the pasture. There was more shouting and crying—mostly from the goats—but they slimmed down.

Next, we noticed Caper, one of our two male goats, peeing suspiciously like a girl. Dummies made no mention of this strange behaviour. Neither did the internet. I’m embarrassed to say how long it took us to figure out that Caper was, in fact, a girl. Certain the old owner had said there were two males, I spent the next week staring at goat bums like some kind of caprine pervert, waiting for tails to flip up, hoping to see them pee. Finally, I could confirm that Rosemary had secretly been a boy all along.

We must have mixed up their names during the hand‌over process and then assumed Rosemary was female because, well, no one would call a boy Rosemary. This explained why neither of them ever came when I called them. But what to do? We tried coming up with alternative names, but nothing ever sounded right and, eventually, we just quit trying. Caper was cool with it, but I’m pretty sure Boy-Rosemary still bears a grudge.

Less than a month later, a new goat crisis popped up, this time in the form of udders. Specifically, Peach and Sophie’s udders, which seemed to be swelling.

I knew they couldn’t be pregnant. I’d studied our goat genitalia enough to be confident the boys were castrated. Could it be their udders were always this size and we hadn’t noticed? After the Caper/Rosemary incident, us dummies knew anything was possible.

A few more weeks of watching the wrong side of goats and I was sure. Their udders were expanding. Those lumpy, lop-sided sacs hanging between their knees looked so uncomfortable, and Dummies had nothing useful to offer. What could I do to help? Milk them? I tentatively stroked an udder and got a quick, painful kick in response. Time to call a professional.

The first thing the vet told us was to put the goats on a diet. She assured us our Saanen goats, descendants of Swiss mountain climbers, loved cool weather and did not require double food rations in any season. She also told us Peach and Sophie had precocious udders, a condition which sometimes occurred in milk goats. An expensive shot of hormones to dry the milk up and all would be fine. Cue more staring at back ends and waiting for things to deflate.

Summer and fall proved no less eventful.

Oliver jumped the fence and ate our grapevines, and we discovered we were no match for goat strength, speed or stubbornness, not necessarily in that order. Luckily, Oliver is fond of his place in the herd. After an afternoon spent pillaging our gardens, he was begging to be let back into the pasture with his friends.

When the neighbour’s horny goat came looking for love and refused to go home, our girls were delighted. Our boys, not so much. We grew exhausted from trying to protect the virtue of our swooning maidens while avoiding the colliding heads and horns of their male kinfolk. This happened three times before our “too busy for this bullshit” neighbour got sick and tired of us calling him to come pick up his wayward Romeo, and he fixed the hole in his fence.

Then Peanut, our sweetest—and my favourite—goat developed a limp. My boyfriend was convinced he had to shoot her, which nearly caused us to break up over a small pebble caught in her hoof.

The days grew shorter and the ground was covered in snow before the horny-goat-owning neighbour came by again. He was looking to re-home his rabbit colony and asked if we wanted any.

“Yes,” my boyfriend and I shouted in unison. “Yes.”

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Image: Rosemary standing in front of the goat house, with a mural painted by artist Emily Read. Find Emily at muralist.ca. Image courtesy of the author.