G.O.A.T.

Get Out (of my field, you) Addlepated Twerp!

Some days on a goat farm are not necessarily the Greatest Of All Time. Not from my point of view.

This story begins with the advice to farmers that if you build a fence that can keep in water, it might keep in a goat. Or the saying that your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight, bull-strong, and goat smart.

The point here is that sometimes goats get out. Right now we have three separate herds of goats. For lots of practical reasons, we want to keep those herds distinctly separate.

The most valuable herd is our breeding mamas, who share their field with Luna, our Great Pyrenees. We’ve never had predator issues with Luna around. Just some barking issues. The largest herd is our young goats, 48 beautiful babies born this spring–young does wethers who are about 6 months old. The remaining herd consists of the miscellaneous bucks, who are kept over the hill down by the creek, out of sight–and smell–of anything female. That herd consists of last year’s daddy, Burro; our emergency male, Romeo (in case something happens to Burro); and one little white buck who was too small to castrate. By the time we got around to banding him, his goat parts were too big for the rubber band, so we just let him in with the bigger bucks, who truth be told, treated him most unkindly.

The fourth buck in the boy band was a castrated wether who had been in Field #2 with his sisters, but when he started exhibiting suspiciously “bucky” behavior, we gave a quick check underneath and realized that he was still in possession of one partially-descended testicle. We were horrified and called our vet–could this half-grown buckling have just impregnated his half-sisters, not yet even half a year old? Yes, the vet assured us, you can assume all your young does are pregnant. Happens all the time. We didn’t find this very reassuring. We had 20 unwanted, inbred, and dangerous pregnancies for our baby girls! Fortunately there was an inexpensive drug we could administer that resolved the problem.

So disaster averted, the precocious young male was added to the buck herd. The boy bucks were fairly isolated as I said, down the road, over the hill, and mostly out-of-sight-out-of-mind. We visited them a few times a week to make sure they had water and we’d usually give them some grain to keep them sort of tame.

Perhaps a flawed arrangement, as evidenced one day when Bruce called me from the barn, saying he could hear some ruckus down by the buck pen and could I go check it out. I walked down to the field from the house and found them all outside the fence but one, the half-buck. He was the one making a fuss because he was alone in the enclosure. Everyone was agitated and upset. The three loose bucks followed me down the hill to the goat shed and gate where I could lead them back in. They weren’t happy, prancing around and calling to each other, but they didn’t want to be very far away from me, either. I couldn’t figure it out.

When I leaned over the gate to unlatch it, I found the source of their distress. There was a dead deer inside their paddock, right in front of the gate! I recoiled. The deer was disemboweled and partially eaten.

A predator, big enough to bring down, or at the very least, eat a full grown deer that had died of other causes, had been in there with the goats, chewing away. No wonder they were freaked out. And by the looks of the deer and the flies feasting on the carcass, the eating and decaying had been going on for a while.

I still had to get the goats inside the fence and past the dead deer, and they were reluctant to go in there. But they high-stepped and white-eyed it through the gate past the carcass and followed me back up the hill. Then Burro, normally sweet and affectionate, decided to kill me. Maybe he thought I was responsible for bringing down and eating the deer–who knows? He reared up and struck out at me.

Burro is a majestic animal, stunning in his shaggy brown coat with black points, and in rut he is 250 pounds of buck reek. He is generally not aggressive. The worst he had done in the past was to push against us occasionally with his wildebeest shaped head and swept-back horns. Bruce rolled him when he showed even mild signs of aggression, and I knew you should roll a goat if it challenged you. I was uphill from him, and careful of my face and his horns, I reached under his body for his far legs. They were covered in a wet, slimy stench, but I got my grip and pulled. He went down on his side, but I couldn’t make him stay there. It had taken all my strength to pull him off balance, and I took the moment he needed to regain his feet to swing my shaking legs up over the five-strand fence and turn on the solar fencer once I was safely outside. I pulled out my phone to call Bruce.

“It’s a dead deer,” I said out of breath. “Oh sh**! Lemme call you back.” Burro had followed me out, sliding through the electric wires and taking the shock on his thick coat. The other guys washed through the fence as if there was nothing there at all. Then Burro reared up and came after me again. I took off my boot and started whacking him in the head. I went over to the trees on the other side of the farm lane and picked up a sturdy branch. Stick in one hand and boot in the other, I started walking backwards towards the house. The four bucks followed me, snorting but keeping their distance. I put my boot back on, not able to manage the boot, the stick and my phone at the same time. “Bruce, can you come down here right now? I need some back up!”

I was completely worn down, shaking, and out of breath. Still, the goats were committed to following me and I figured they would probably kill me if I didn’t keep moving, so I trudged up the hill towards the barn, hoping Bruce would show up in the truck before I passed out and joined the deer in becoming the next meal for whatever goats or other predators lurked on our farm.

We had a small triangular paddock between the barn and the house, and over the summer our boys (the human ones) had helped Bruce fence it in. We wanted to do it in permanent, woven wire, but there was a lot going on that summer and we didn’t quite get it together to do woven wire, but it was a good hot fence plugged into a long extension cord plugged into the shop. I decided that was where the bucks should go next, since they clearly weren’t staying in the buck pasture any longer. Bruce met me and we quickly settled the guys in their new space.

The problem was, the females were right across the road. Abe and his harem of does stood indolently on one one side and Burro with his bachelor bucks stared back at them. Two hot electric fences and a narrow country lane were all that separated them. By nightfall Burro was out–we put him back in–and by morning, he was in with the females. Well, Abe had beaten him to it by about a month, and it looked like all the goats but one were already covered. We gave up and let him stay.

Two electric fences and a barn are all that separate the boys from the yearling does, who have been given their hormone injections, and will be coming into season soon.

We have a new buck paddock ready–seven strands, with sturdy step-in posts every few yards. It’s away from the does, close to the house, and full of brush and wilted vegetation. The bucks should love it. We just need to wire it into a power source. It should be hot enough to keep the bucks in, and deer and predators out. 

And if it doesn’t, there’s always the livestock auction.

Or the barbecue pit!