How Many Goats Does It Take To Make A Herd?

Well, we're up to three goats now. Does that qualify as a herd?

We'd planned to have more than one anyway and if we let Spike eat all the blackberries on the property by himself, we'd have to change his name to Jabba the Goat. Ironic, really, since Spike Jones got the nickname "Spike" because he was skinny. (His dad worked for the railroad and Spike looked like a railroad spike. Get it? Anyway....)

Our little Spike was pretty lonely by himself so we decided to head back up to Ridgefield for some goat-wrangling.  The horse, Sundance, was pretty interested in the commotion as you can see by his tail sticking out.

 

These handsome boys are twins and step-brothers to Spike.

So far they are sticking pretty close to one another.  They are a little more adventurous, though, and explored the pasture right off whereas Spike stayed in the front half of the pasture, right around the gate and the food.

They are both a bit more standoffish than Spike but this one with darling curly ears is the more outgoing of the two.  After a couple of days, they seem to be warming up to us a bit, especially when we have food.  Curly let JD pet him briefly!  (It helped that JD was holding some tasty maple branches at the time.)

The other one will come close if Curly does but still hangs back a little.  He's less talkative than Curly, too.
 

It's been interesting to watch them interact with Spike.  As we suspected, Spike quieted right down with some company and they all seem to get along well enough.  I was kind of worried The Twins would gang up on Spike but, to the contrary, a pecking order (butting order?) has already been established with Spike at the top, then the curly-eared one and the quiet one at the bottom.  When we throw brush in for them to eat, they will all come running but Spike will butt them pretty hard if he thinks they are getting the good bits.  

We have to decide on two more names now.  I thought of a couple:  Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy but I thought I'd research a little more.  I Googled "Famous Twins", "Famous Brothers", "Famous Duos" and got some interesting results from Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers and Fluther.com 

Castor & Pollux
Romulus & Remus
Albert & Ebenezer Fox (English poachers from the late 1800s)
Princes William & Harry

Orville & Wilbur Wright (A bit of a tongue-twister)

Calvin & Hobbes

Ernie & Bert

Fred & George Weasley (this doesn't work since The Twins aren't redheaded)

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (I may be a computer geek but even I'm not that dorky!)

Spongebob & Patrick

Then it got really silly:

Peanut Butter & Jelly

Q & A

Liz and Nikki

Liz and Eddie

Liz and Richard

Liz and Richard….the sober years

Liz and the Senator

Liz and ‘that’ construction dude

Liz and ( .....insert name)

Liz and Jacko

Liz and the Hope Diamond (thanks mee_ouch)

Mac & Cheese (All I can think about is Joey's TV show on Friends)

Gin & Tonic (this from JD)

Even though we've been calling the one with the curly ears "Curly", I don't want to name them after the Three Stooges. I'm leaning towards Wallace & Gromit, especially since Wallace talks all the time and Gromit is quiet. That could suit our two boys pretty well I think. I'll give it a couple more days though and see if they tell me. They all have distinct personalities and I want to make sure and find something that fits.