Meet the Herd: The Eight Goats Running Green Roof Ranch (Whether We Like It Or Not)

People ask us fairly often what breed our goats are, and the honest answer is: yes. All of them. None of them match, none of them were planned as a matched set, and at this point we've stopped trying to explain it and just started introducing them like family, because that's basically what they are.

We didn't set out to build a herd of eight. It happened the way most things happen around here, one goat became two, two became "well, goats do better in bigger groups," and somewhere along the way we crossed a line from "we have goats" into "we are, apparently, goat people." No regrets. Mostly.

The Cast of Characters

Every goat on this place has a job, whether or not they know it, and a personality that shows up whether we want it to or not.

There's the self-appointed herd queen, “mama goat” doesn't matter what breed she technically is, she's decided she's in charge, and eight goats have collectively agreed not to argue with her. She's first through every gate, first to the feed bucket, and first to loudly object if breakfast is even five minutes late.

There's the escape artist, Marty, who has personally inspected every square foot of fencing on this property and found at least three weaknesses we didn't know existed. If a gate latch is even slightly loose, she will find it, and she take everyone with her, looking almost offended on her behalf that we didn't notice sooner.

There's the shadows, April and Freddy, who follow you around the property like a dog, forehead-bumps for attention, and strong, vocal opinions about being left alone for even short periods.

There's the skeptic, Butter cup who trusts nobody, checks every new object in the pasture (buckets, wheelbarrows, garden hoses) as a potential threat, and takes a solid two minutes of hard staring before deciding whether today is a good day.

And then there's the rest of the crew, Fern, Haru, Carmel, and Lily  a rotating cast of good eaters, decent climbers, and enthusiastic fence-testers who round out the herd and keep things interesting in ways we don't always appreciate in the moment but definitely laugh about later.

Eight very different animals, and somehow it works. Mixed like this, they've turned out hardier and more laid-back than we expected, fewer of the specific health quirks you sometimes get with a single breed, and a lot more personality range to keep us entertained.

What Eight Goats Actually Teaches You

If you've never kept goats, here's the truth nobody tells you up front: they are not low-maintenance in the way people assume, but they are not high-maintenance the way people fear, either. They need decent fencing (see: escape artist, above), regular hoof trims, a run-in shelter they'll ignore half the time in favor of standing in the rain looking personally wronged, and minerals they will absolutely knock over and dump into the mud within an hour of you refilling them.

What they teach you, mostly, is patience and a sense of humor. You cannot out-stubborn a goat. You can only out-last one, and even then it's not guaranteed. This past month alone we've had: a jailbreak(some of my raspberries were casualties), a standoff over a new mineral feeder that took three days to resolve, and one incident involving a garden hose that we're choosing not to fully explain in writing.

And yet. There is nothing quite like walking out to the pasture in the evening and having eight goats come trotting over, not because it's feeding time, but just because you showed up. That's the part that gets you. That's the part that turns "we have goats" into "we are goat people" without you ever really agreeing to it.

Why We Keep Them

Practically speaking, goats on a homestead like ours are part of the bigger picture, they browse down brush and blackberry that would otherwise take over, they're good company for the ducks and geese, and there's something grounding about having animals whose day revolves around simple things: food, sunshine, each other, and finding new ways to test the fence.

But if we're honest, the real reason is less practical than that. They're funny. They're weirdly affectionate in their own aloof way. And eight goats with eight totally different personalities means there's always something happening out there, some new drama, some new alliance, some new escape attempt to shake our heads at.

We'll keep introducing you to them one at a time as the stories come up, because there are a lot of stories. In the meantime, the egg stand's still stocked at the end of the driveway if you're local, and if you want to bring home a little piece of the ranch, we've got tee shirts and homestead swag on Etsy and our website, it helps keep the feed bins (and the mineral feeders the goats keep dumping) full.

Until next week, from the whole mismatched crew,

The Green Roof Ranch family