This Christmas we gave my daughter... two more goats. It was an offer we couldn't refuse. The people we bought her doe (Clover) from are scaling their goat operation way down (their daughter is getting ready to head to college), and so we bought our doe's mother (Ellie) and a cousin (Ebby).

Ellie is a County Fair veteran (although not our county) and has won multiple awards. She's described as a "primper," basically a ham of an animal who somehow senses that it's time to be "on" and performs well while showing. The only thing is, she hates being trimmed. Oh, well. So does one of our wethers.

Ebby is, I think, the same age as our doe, so is an unknown quantity. Thing is, she was in heat when we brought her home, but isn't now.

The thing is - all of this means that, if we breed all three (which I believe my daughter plans to do), we could have as many as a dozen goats by summer - twins from two of the does and triplets from a third (triplets run in the line), plus the three moms and the two wethers.

My daughter does not plan to keep all the offspring. Or so she tells me.

When I was carting in food to the lot of them yesterday morning, I got the feeling that, even though I had some reservations about this, it was the right thing to do. It was a feeling I've only gotten a rare number of times since adulthood. So I'm happy that I've done something right for my daughter.

Even if it means lots of goat milk fudge and goat milk ice cream and yes, perhaps even some goat chili, in my future.

I have no idea what any of this will mean to the chickens. And speaking of, eggs collected last week: 42. Look for a year-end roundup next week.