Thursday, February 10, 2011

raising goats

Most often a buck(male) goat is mean, the girls, never. The buck will come at you with his head down and horns ready to run into you. Sometimes they'll come at you standing on their back legs and waving their front feet - out to get you. To prevent a lot of that we use a "hot stick", a long yellow stick that has batteries and delivers a powerful shock. The buck we had knew exactly what it was. If you came in the barn with it, he'd take off. When Perry goes down the driveway and stops, the goats think he's brought them something to eat and will come running. One day he was working with a shovel - with a yellow handle - to fill up a hole. The goats came running and when Perry picked up the shovel to put it back in the truck the buck ran the other way as fast as he could. He remembered that something that looked just like that shovel delivered a jolt he didn't want again. So goats have memories and they know their colors. The girls stuck around; they'd never been shocked and yellow meant nothing to them. We'll be having more babies in about 4 months; gestation is 5 months. Nothing is more fun than baby goats and their antics.

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