The gifts of goats

“Can I get my goats now?”

That’s not the first thing parents expect to hear from their adolescent daughter as she comes out of anesthesia after surgery.

But Callie Faust wasn’t kidding about bringing the animals to the family’s 13-acre farm in the Town of Grafton.

Faust plays basketball, volleyball and softball and she loves to dance, but those activities came to a crashing year-long halt last fall when she went through spinal fusion to treat scoliosis.

She had been begging her parents for goats, and they weren’t about to crush her dream in a hospital. There was just one stipulation. Callie had to do something with the animals other than keep them as pets.

Callie began researching and learned how to make goat milk soap.

She and her family planned on starting small and bought four female Nigerian dwarf goats. That plan got nixed shortly after they brought Ivy, Daisy, Peaches and Copper home.

“When we got them, we didn’t know they were pregnant,” Callie’s sister Ahnna, 17, said.

The Fausts soon had doubled their tiny herd to eight. The babies are named after candy — Hershey, Snickers, Oreo and, for one born on Easter, Peeps.

Callie came to love goats after seeing them on a visit to a farm. “They were just adorable,” she said. “They just made me laugh.”

They also make her work, and the 13-year-old is fine with it.

The goats are fed in the morning and watered at night — they each drink one and a half gallons of water per day. They get milked daily and their pens need to be regularly cleaned.

But those tasks are just the basics. Callie already has the top priority down.

“Love is the biggest thing,” she said.

Callie often cuddles with her goats and they love to be brushed, she said.

Callie isn’t the only one whose workload ballooned thanks to the family’s new hooved friends. Ahnna has always been into yoga and tried goat yoga during a vacation in Arizona.

She loved it so much that she completed the required 200 hours over winter to get certified.

Then the family pitched the idea of goat yoga to the Grafton Recreation Department, which instantly decided to offer classes.

The goats recently made their debut and required little direction.

“They use the people as playthings,” Callie said.

“The moms put their feet up on people,” Ahnna said, “but the babies jump up.”

Since goats are 100% food motivated, shaking a bottle of grain helps to guide them. They also put carrots on participants’ toes.

There were just minor glitches.

“They like to do their business on people’s mats,” Ahnna said.

They also tried to rip up Ahnna’s notes and occasionally tried to gnaw on people’s hair.

“They eat anything,” Callie said.

The goats enjoyed the sessions so much they chased participants to their cars, not wanting them to leave.

Ahnna hosted a goat yoga session last Thursday morning for the Dashers, her Divine Savior Holy Angels’ soccer team, and team members loved it.

Meanwhile, the goats seem to be enjoying life with the Fausts. They jump on windowsills watching Callie and Ahnna come home from school and are “super loud,” Callie said.

They bleat when they see people or want attention. “They act so much like dogs,” Ahnna said.

However, they do not like dogs. Ginger, the Fausts’ miniature goldendoodle, gets bucked and snorted at when she gets near the goats.

It’s a different story with their “super fat” cat Destroyer, named for what it did to the family’s furniture. The indoor-outdoor feline decided it wanted to live with the goats, and they are fine with it.

The goats eat grain, hay and carrots and love strawberry tops and helicopter leaves.

They usually stay together, but each has its own personality. Hershey loves to be cuddled and rubs its head on people. Ivy and Peaches are also cuddlers and, along with Oreo, are big yoga fans. Peeps has lots of energy and can be mischievous. Daisy is quiet but lets everyone know of danger when Ginger is in the area. Copper bucks everyone.

They also make a bit of mischief. The Fausts are building a new barn for their new residents and the goats are all too happy to knock dirt back into the foundation, in between playing king of the hill on top of the large piles. They knocked over a wood pile, then knocked it over again after the family rebuilt it. They also knocked over four small apple trees, and Hershey ate plants near the family’s chicken pen.

The goats like to bump around soccer balls and jump on boxes.

And they provide the main ingredient for Callie’s goat milk soap. Ahnna developed a website for the farm to tell its story and sell the soap.

To make it, the milk has to be frozen, then mixed with lye, oils and colorings and put into a mold.

For more information, visit www.faustfarmfresh.com.