Introducing Millie and Molly

Millie and Molly are our two new doe kids. We got these two goats from Burnie in Tasmania’s North from a lovely lady who had rescued a number of kids from a friend who normally puts excess goats down.
These two girls will form the core of our goat flock and we are hoping to use the goats for both milk and as a weed eradication approach.
Goats are very fond of new plant growth and have been shown to be very effective for weed eradication as they eat the flowers and fruit of weed plants. This means that the weed lifecycle is stopped before they can spread. Of course, this means that we will still have the old growth weeds in the top paddock, but new weeds will be less prevalent.
Our top paddock has loads of weeds such as wild radish, thistle, blackberry and flat-weeds. I’ve tried using the ride-on mower, but it is on the side of a hill and it’s too steep to do so safely. The weeds and grass need to be kept down as this is a bushfire risk for our property and for our neighbours.

The girls will be just 6 weeks old when we pick them up, so they will need to be inoculated with CD-T to prevent tetanus and overeating disorder. They will also still be on milk formula for a while yet, so I am very grateful that the lady who is giving these girls away is also providing enough formula to get them past weening.
To prepare the property for the goats, I had to make a shelter and I will need to improve the fence in the area where they will be kept. Initially, the goats will be kept in a smallish area of around 360²m. The fence between our property and our neighbour is pretty old and in poor repair, so I need to replace this with dog mesh fence. The length of fence needed is about 32m and I will need to replace the fence posts as well. Fortunately, I have a couple of tree lengths left over from a previous project, so I can cut these to size to make the sturdy fence posts that I will need.
I have also constructed a pretty basic shelter for the goats from pine framing timber and fence palings (see the Goat Shelter section for more information on construction).