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| Name: |
Dance
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Age: |
Two years old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Kind: |
American Alpine Goat
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| Home: |
North Carolina, USA
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Dance is an American Alpine dairy goat. She is technically livestock, but all our livestock are really more like pets. Dance is short for Spinning Spider Dance Alone, which is her registered name. Spinning Spider was her herd of birth and Dance Alone is her name. I'm pretty sure Dance Alone is a song.
I got Dance just this summer from a large commercial dairy (Spinning Spider Creamery). She had been raised as a bottle baby. I generally don't much care for bottle babies - they are obnoxious - but Dance is quite the exception.
Dance is a special doe. I won't go into too many details, but basically because she is dark colored she is prone to copper deficiency which makes her prone to parasites which causes her to have poor health and condition. When I got her she was in kind of sad shape. One problem with large dairies is that they can't give each and every goat exactly what they need. The amount of copper dark goats need can be toxic to light goats, who have much lower copper requirements. The one-size-fits-all management system just doesn't work for a lot of goats. Anyways, after a little copper supplementation and high quality feed, I am happy to say that Dance is now looking shiny and has put on some weight.
You might have noticed the little white things dangling from Dance's neck in the photos. Aren't they just super cute? They're called wattles. They are genetic, and not all goats have them. They help keep them keep cool in the summer.
Dance kidded twice before I got her, in 2016 and in 2017. ("Kidded" means had kids or baby goats.) I bred her on October 20, so she is due to kid on March 19. (Goat gestation is 150 days.) I'm doing a video series on YouTube of Dance's pregnancy and kidding process. Feel free to follow along on YouTube!
At some point during her time at Spinning Spider, Dance fish hooked herself on a bungee cord gate latch and cut the side of her mouth. The dairy culled her partly because vets doing health check were always sceptical of that spot, thinking it could be a bacterial disease. It really doesn't bother her, only sometimes she drools at night.
All told, Dance is a really sweet doe.
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Talk about Dance in Pet Talk!
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