Dave Smith wrote:

<snipped for space>

Sounds like you had a good day... and yes, those auctions are
interesting to say the least. But please bear in mind that although the
prices sound cheap, you'd have to slaughter any livestock you bought
there yourself - or if your local municipality rules and regulations
don't allow that, you'd have to (pay?) somebody else to do the
slaughtering for you... Not to mention the feed costs that you'll incur
until as time as the slaughtering takes place.

> The only thing that stopped me from getting one is that I thought I
> had nowhere to put them. I had forgotten all about my dog kennel. It
> is 16' square and could easily hold 2-3 until I could put up a fence
> for a
> larger enclosure. That is probably a good thing because I later
> realized that, as cute as they are, they turn into goats and can be a
> real pain in the neck.

Too darn true.

IME, goats are quite good 'escape artists' if you don't have a really
strong pen - and they'll eat almost any vegetation they see. I've seen
the damage caused when some goats 'got loose' and wandered into a
friend's garden... you don't wanna know.

We actually have a rather large bona fide goat pen on our property -
built by the previous owners. Trust me, Alcatraz could take some
security tips from that pen ;-)

However, we don't use it as such because we eventually decided against
keeping goats ourselves - but Dad did some building alterations and
turned the feed storeroom contained therein into a coop for our
chickens to sleep in at night... By day the hens scratch around happily
in the yard part of the pen; keeps (most) predators out. <g>
--
Cheers
Chatty Cathy