A big THANK YOU to Coni of Hoof N Horn Farm for creating and donating my beautiful logo after she read my story. She is an amazing artist and very accommodating! I highly reccommend her for all your advertising needs!

I had been in 4H since 2004 raising a lamb for market and in 2006, my graduating year of high school, I decided to branch from just sheep and start showing goats. A schoolmate of mine, raised goats and thought I'd talk to her about getting one for a dairy project so I wouldn't have to sell the animal at our annual auction. I originally wanted a Nubian from the research I had conducted about dairy goats. She only had Lamanchas and had one doe bred to have a purebred Lamancha. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted an earless goat. I didn't have to wait long before I was called up on February 12 and told the doe started labor and I should come by to see the baby born. I rushed up the mountain to see my first kidding. However poor Nirvana was having trouble delivering the kid because one of the baby's legs was tucked back. Ariah told me I had to reach in and pull the leg out. I looked at her as if she was crazy; I'd only been around goats in petting zoos and seen them at our fair, let alone seeing one give birth and actually assisting! She told me I had the smallest hands and the baby needed to be pulled out. So with my arm lubed up I went in and pulled the leg out and out came the baby. A beautiful doeling. I was in love instantly-I didn't care if she had ears. She could be mine! But I had to wait a couple days before I got the good news since someone else had requested a doe in front of me. They passed her up and by day four she was home with me. Leila lived in my house for three months while I was bottle feeding her. I took that little goat everywhere I could. She went to the library, she slept in my bed, and she even went sledding with me. She was my baby girl. I've captured hundreds of photos of her sleeping on the couch, standing in my dishwasher, jumping off the bean bag chair, and so many more of her funny personality.

Leila and me taking a nap---Leila checking out the dishes---Leila and me sledding

But the time eventually came where Leila had to go outside and be a goat. I decided to buy a Lamancha wether born February 1st, Tycho, to train as a pack and cart goat and him and Leila became the best of buds.


Leila won GCH and her mother RGCH

As the 4H year came to end with our county fair, I walked away with a nice sum of money from selling my market lamb and a couple ribbons from winning first in showmanship and breeding for both my goats as well as Grand Champion Dairy Doe with Leila. I decided to purchase two more goats, another Lamancha doe, and a LaBoer wether to add to my growing herd. I loved goats and couldn't get enough of them! By the spring of 2007 I added five Boer does, a Lamancha doeling, Miesha, plus three bucklings to my herd. I was up to thirteen goats on a half acre and then had seven babies born from a few of my does. Sadly, with a four year relationship ending in April and me being unable to continue living on my rental with all my goats, I reduced my herd to mainly Lamanchas and moved to Yuba City to live with my mom. However my mother lived in a new development and there was no chance for goats there. So I had to leave my little herd at my fairgrounds until I could find a place nearby to keep my goats. A friend of mine agreed to feed and water the goats while I was gone, although he had no experience with them, he was the only one who agreed to do it without being paid. About two weeks rolled by and I still hadn't had any luck finding a place to keep my goats. I received a call on June 16 from my friend stating that Leila wasn't acting right. I was two hours away and called a local goat friend to go and check her out. I was told that she was bloated and moaning and wouldn't stand and was quite listless. I began panicking. This was my baby and I wasn't there for her. I called every vet in my county trying to describe her symptoms to see if they could go out and help her, no one was available for a "house call". I rushed from the valley and started speeding up towards the mountains in hopes to comfort my baby girl. I hadn't been driving for 20 minutes when I received a phone call that still haunts me today...Leila had passed.
To me this was the worst thing I had ever endured. I had never lost a family member or friend and this just broke my heart. I know for some its difficult to understand why I would be so upset over a goat. She had so much love and personality, she was my baby. When I got to the fairgrounds, my dad had moved Leila to another pen and set her in a more natural position. I couldn't believe my baby was gone. I looked at her kids who kept crying out wondering where their mother had gone. I grabbed Miesha and held her tight. She was a direct sister to Leila and had a very similar personality to Leila. Miesha happily just sat it my lap cooing and chewing her cud. I began the process of searching my pens trying to discover if she ate something harmful to make her die within a matter of hours. My search was unsuccessful. Our fairgrounds manager came down and apologized for my loss but said he cannot have sick animals in the fairgrounds that might jeopardize the other 4Hers projects. I had one week to clear out my goats and thoroughly clean my pens.
My friend and I loaded up Leila in the back of my truck and took her to the only place I knew that would bury her for me. Back to her birthplace in Meadow Valley. I had to pay my school mate's father $20 to bury Leila and he wouldn't even tell me where he was going to bury her. I'll never know where she was laid to rest and can never visit her gravesite. To him goats were just a business and he had always harassed me and how I let her live in my house and dressed her in a little red sweater. I still wish I knew where she was, she was a turning point in my life and had me start a whole new direction for my future.
A couple days after Leila traumatizing death on me, I was able to find a place about six miles from my mother's in a nearby town named Sutter. The woman offered me a little fenced in section with use of a barn for my goats. She didn't want any rent and offered me hay at $5 a bale. It was a great relief to know someone cared so much to help me out. My mid June, within a week of Leila's death, I gathered up what was left of my herd and brought them to there new home in Sutter. I hadn't made any friends or got a job yet so I would just spend hours a day sitting in my pen with my goats sitting around me and Miesha in my lap trying to figure out what happened to Leila. She was only 16 months when she died and I had hoped to enjoy her company for at least another 12 or so years.
So that is the joyous and tearful story of how I started with goats. I recently figured out that Leila did not die of poisoning but had all the symptoms of  enterotoxemia. Sadly little can be done to help cure it once it has stuck the animal since deaths occurs so quickly. It was a hard lesson for me to learn and I am quite stringent on annual vaccinations of preventing the horrible disease.