Hindel Kidz 1: Enter, Elmer
Hindel Kidz 1:
Enter, Elmer
A pygmy goat is a small type of goat. Pygmy goats are not used for their milk or for meat. A girl goat weighs about 35 to 50 pounds and a boy goat about 40 to 60 pounds. Wither heights are from 16 to 23 inches. A wither is a boy goat that cannot have babies.
The colors of a pygmy goat can be white, caramel, gray, black with a little bit of white on their ears, solid black, or brown agouti. Agouti means their legs are a darker solid color then the rest of their bodies. Also the boys are usually darker then the girls.
Female goats are called does and male goats are called bucks. Baby goats are called kids.
Just outside the little village of Watomika Creek, there is a backyard farm. It is not a regular farm. There are no horses, cow, pigs or chickens. Just twenty mischievous pygmy goats, two whitetail deer, two ducks, a dog and six cats. The name of the farm is Hindel Kidz.
It all began when Jack wanted to buy a registered male pygmy goat. Registered means the goat is 100% pygmy and has a birth certificate from the National Pygmy Goat Association (NPGA). The mother and the daddy goat must have birth certificates, too.
Jack’s granddaughter, Brianna, showed goats at the county fair in the 4-H program. In the beginning, Bree was going to show cattle, but a calf was going to cost anywhere between $500 to $1,000 dollars. A pygmy goat only cost $50 dollars. One of Bree’s friends was going to show goats, too. Bree’s daddy went out and bought two girl pygmy goats. Since he still lived with Jack, they kept the goats at Jack’s house. Jack could also visit with his granddaughter when she came to see her goats.
One goat was a caramel color and the other was solid black. Bree named the caramel one Butterscotch and the black one LaPortia. LaPortia was the name of a person in a story problem in Bree’s school math book. Bree liked this name very much. However, LaPortia had different feelings.
“How did I get the short end of the stick?“ she wondered. Everyone started calling her Porsche. Then it became her nickname.
Bree was going to show Butterscotch at the fair and Porsche was a back up.
When Butterscotch got too old to be shown or Bree lost interest in her, Bree’s daddy bought a baby boy goat. Bree couldn’t show Porsche because the fair rules did not allow people to show goats with horns. The baby boy was a white goat and a veterinarian had cut off his horns. He was also a wither and they called him Bandit.
Bree only showed Bandit for one year. Then Jack decided to buy a little white girl goat for Bree to show. This goat was supposed to be registered, but her birth certificate and her daddy’s birth certificate had been lost. Bree named her Sparkle, but everyone thought that was a stupid name for a goat so Jack called her Nibstick from day one. Over the years, her name has been shorted to Nibby. She quickly became Jack’s favorite. Bree showed Nibby at the fair and won first place in her class and first place over all two years in a row. After Nibby turned two years old, the fair rules said the only way Bree could show Nibby again was if she had a baby. Enter, Elmer.
Jack decided if he was going to get a male goat, he might as well get a registered one. His son, Sven, started to search on the Internet for goat farms in Ohio. Bree was too lazy to do this herself.
Sven found a farm down in St. Clairsville called Rolling Hills. The goat they had for sale was a medium gray agouti. He had black legs and a gray body. His name was Sky. Jack called and soon Sky came to live in Jack’s backyard. This was going to be his fourth home.
“Here we go again,” Sky thought.
One day Jack was calling, “Come on, Sky. Come here, Sky.” But the goat wouldn’t come. Finally, he said, “Come on, Elmer Thud,” and the goat walked right over to him. Ever since the goat has been known as Elmer. Elmer didn’t know what to think being in a big pen with lots of room to run.
There was one other goat that lived in the backyard. His name was Merlin and he belonged to Jack’s other granddaughter, Kristin. Merlin kept getting out of the pen up at Kristin’s house so they brought him down to Jack’s. Merlin was a wither and was also supposed to be registered.
