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Goats
Having farm animals means the occasional loss. Billy,
our baby wild goat, died this week.
He was perfectly active and seemingly healthy when he went to bed at night
but by morning he was in obvious distress. Young goats sometimes die
suddenly. There was not much we could do other than try to comfort
the little guy.Even though we were constantly trying to remind Billy that he was a farm animal and not a house pet, he still followed us everywhere and was adamant on being right in the middle of everything. I was working on the car one day when Billy jumped right up to give me a hand. I'd lift him down but he would just jump right back up. I finally had to carry him over to the other side of the house and let him help Valerie work in her garden. When guests arrive, our dog Teela likes to run out and greet them. Billy followed right along behind her. A friend visited recently and as he was getting out of the car he made a comment about our friendly dogs. I said "That one's not a dog." After a second glance he was surprised to see that it was a little goat trying to jump right in his car and eat everything in site. You'd think the bleating instead of barking would have given it away. 
Goats are herd animals. As a result, they do best when they are
with other goats. There's a goat dairy on the other side of the
island that sells their young wethers. Billy was a wild goat and
would never grow as large as a typical dairy goat so we were a bit
concerned about getting another male goat that might try to fight with
Billy. We were ensured that these dairy goats had all been
castrated, disbudded (horns removed) and bottle fed so they were all
quite gentle. Indeed, Billy turned out to be the bully. Our
new goat Skippy spent the first couple days getting head butted by
Billy. They finally managed to work things out but only as long
as Skippy agreed that Billy was in charge. It was less than a
week later that Billy died suddenly.Skippy has a very different personality. Skippy is much more concerned with eating all day long while Billy was more concerned with exploring and climbing everything in sight. Skippy doesn't mind being pet but he won't come running when we call like Billy would. On the other hand, Skippy isn't always trying to force his way into our house and demanding our attention. He can still get vocal whenever he feels like he was left alone for too long. We haven't decided yet if we want to sell Skippy to our neighbor and go back to having no goats or if we want to buy a couple more and try keeping them in the macadamia nut orchard. We're going to take some time before making any decisions.
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