What was I thinking?

Let me preface this with saying that yes I encourage my kids to get involved in lots of different activities. Most of those activities are within the 4-H program. Jessie has projects in Food and Nutrition, Food preservation, Horticulture, Scrapbooking, Rabbits, Photography, and Goats. It is the goat part that is giving me headaches today.

You see, she had a couple of cute little pygmy goats which on their own are not much work beyond the usual animal maintenance. However, she wants to add a project area to her goat project. She wants to raise a market goat for the 4-H youth auction at fair. Fine, great. She brought this up after last year's auction and I thought it would be no big deal. Boy was I in for an education. I thought you just find a breeder and go pick out the goats you want. Little did I know that it was going to be this difficult. I have a fellow 4-H leader (yes I am a leader of the group) whose son has raised market goats. She assured me that her friend would have boar goats ready at the right time for us to get one or two. However, her friend purchased a new farm right before the new year. Great for them, not so great for us, because the farm is in Deer Park Washington which is several hundred miles from our home. So all this leads us to yesterday. The day I completely lost my mind! I agreed to purchase for Jessie two baby goats that need to be bottle fed!!! Okay in and of itself but these guys do not know how to eat from a bottle having never had to do it before. You see we took them right from their mom and put them in my van to bring them home. Teaching animals to take a bottle after they have been with their moms is hard and usually an exercise in frustration. That is what I have been dealing with all day. They do not like the bottles, they do not want to eat from the bottles and I am going nuts! What was I thinking? Why did I possibly think this was going to be a good idea? I could have had her wait another couple months and have nice, weaned goats. Granted they would have been more expensive but really the milk replacer was not that cheap either. All in all, I am seriously regreting this particular decision!