Cocoa Loco

This year we were fortunate in having a brown goat doeling that lived (something my husband apparently really wanted) .  We have had ones born previously, but they all seemed to catch pneumonia within days of birth and die, no matter what we did, and even if their twins were fine.  I chalked it up to some kind of genetic inferiority on the part of the brown goats, some kind of hereditary immune issue being passed on from our previous buck, Spike.


Cocoa and her mother, Chocolate.

As I said before, this year was different.  Perhaps it was due to multiple factors: Cocoa was born to our best mother goat (Chocolate will let any goat kid nurse off of her) and she was a single rather than a twin.  As she was all brown, given the history we'd had with previous goat kids, we took special care with her, checking on her multiple times a day, watching every sneeze (goats sneeze a lot normally anyway), making sure every poop was regular, giving her the warmest stall.  Although we may not have needed to worry about that last part, because within a day of her birth, she was zooming laps around the stall, jumping in and out of the hay feeder, and trying to jump onto her mother.  Maybe we should have named her Spitfire.  Unfortunately for her, because of her unique (to our herd) coloring and our inability within the household to decide on a name, she has three: Cocoa Cinnamon Bon Bon.  Fancy.  Usually we just call her Cocoa; if she's bad we'll add "Loco" to the end of that.

Cocoa trying to get as far into the hay feeder as possible.

All that personal attention has turned her into a personable goat, in that she enjoys being around people, and nibbling on their clothes while being petted.  However, around goats she is the instigator and troublemaker, always finding new ways of making life exciting.

Cocoa, having decided to join in the spring gardening frenzy, proudly goes to display her find to the other goats.

Like our other goats, she has decided that the grass on the outside of the fence must somehow taste much different and better than the pasture.  Our pasture fence-line has a perfectly manicured one-foot area all around it from the goats eating it.  Unfortunately for Cocoa, as she has grown, so have her horns.  With her wedge-shaped head, this has resulted in her being able to get her head through the fence to the other side, but not back. Which is all fine and well until she runs out of grass to eat.  So we've had to put the Pipe of Shame on her.  It works wonderfully to keep her from getting her head stuck in the fence, isn't too heavy (yay for PVC and duct tape!) and only took the other goats a day to get used to.

Cocoa, wearing her Pipe of Shame.