Sheep vs. Goats in the Bible: Why are goats so bad?

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Now I've been wondering this for a few months - in all of the well-known Bible stories, why are goats always representative of the evildoers, the sinners, the ones thrown into the Lake of Fire? (Read the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 if you need a refresher.) There are several biblical references to goats, and none portray them in a positive light. Obviously, sheep are the preferred ruminant here...After we adopted our own goat babies,  I began to be curious about the reason for this. Snakes, venomous spiders, vultures - that I would understand. Who wants to be like them? Our goat boys, however are playful and affectionate, loving and intelligent, sweet little snugglers...What's wrong with that? I decided to do a little research.

It is worth mentioning that I do have some experience with sheep. When I was in high school, my parents moved us to a small "farmette" with a few acres and a dilapidated old barn. Soon we had three ewes grazing the fields, then lambs were born, and in a year or so there were several dozen of the woolly blobs meandering around outside in an attempt to net a little profit from the wool and meat. (I'm not sure what the bottom-line figures were here; my guess is that after all the breeding/shearing/worming/fencing etc is factored in, there are definitely easier ways to make money.) But what I definitely do not remember is ever forming an attachment to any of the sheep. Maybe I was just a self-absorbed teenager, or maybe I was busy nurturing our eleven cats, or perhaps sheep just aren't as personable as goats. Whatever the reason, I know that my preference for overall likeability definitely falls on the side of the goats. (And in case anyone is wondering, the photo above is not one of those sheep from my childhood - it's Neville, a puppet my daughters took on vacation last year and photographed in dozens of weird locations...don't ask why.)

According to biblical scholars in my quick internet search, here's the answer to my question: Although our pet goats may possess many qualities which endear them to human companions, as examples of religious followers, they lose out to sheep every time. Sheep are inherently calm, compliant, obedient, good followers, rarely causing trouble. Goats, on the other hand, are impulsive, devious, stubborn head-butters. They are rarely content with what they have, always wanting what's out of their reach and seeing every fence or boundary as a challenge. Great fun as pets, but hardly how you want to populate a congregation. It does make some sense, though I'm not entirely satisfied. I don't think Jesus' parable was meant to discourage independent thinkers altogether. It's more a factor of actions and behavior...but I think that's all for now - looks like the goats have gotten out again! Gotta go...

Meet the goat cousins: the answer to "Why???"

Meet Leia and Obi - the inspiration behind the chaos which is now our life...tiny Nigerian Dwarf bottle babies who started it all. We met them at Emily's cousins' house (Aunt Karen's Animal Rescue) - if you haven't read the earliest posts on this blog this is a good time to go back and do that. (These were the "Bernies" we thought we were getting.) Really, there is almost nothing cuter than a week-old baby goat. It's sort of like what happens when all your friends start having babies and suddenly you decide you need one too, right away, and nobody tells you how you won't get a full night's sleep for years and you'll
have baby spit-up everywhere and all the things 
you'll have to buy and then of course the mountains of diapers...if you had all the facts and figures ahead of time no one would ever have children, but of course once you finally hold them in your arms you're madly in love with them and can't imagine not having done this - well, that's a little how it is with goats.
Recently we visited these babies again, the first time since these photos were taken, and they are now almost as big as our goat boys (who are a month
older) and causing so much chaos they make our
goaties seem almost angelic. We had to park at the
 end of the long driveway, as Obi and Leia leap to the top of any car that pulls in, then have great fun sliding down the windshield over and over. They sneak into the house regularly as well as visiting the neighbors. (Leia has learned to get herself a snack from the neighbor's outdoor table, once in the midst of a dinner party!). They run with the five dogs and four cats who also live there, eating from everyone else's bowls and have no clue that they are any
different from all the other pets. Their "free range" 
lifestyle affords them greater freedom than my fenced-in boys, but oh the consequences...After a day with the cousins we were glad to get home to our own babies, but I think I'll stick with the fencing.


(And here are Leia and Obi now - enjoying their favorite napping place on top of the SUV...just ignore the little hoof marks in the paint finish...)

Dance of the Goat Boys

 

Just add your own music...these head-butting face-offs are their favorite activity on the deck.

Life turns on a dime...(or a goat)

Although I generally avoid authors in the horror genre, I recently read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Stephen King's latest bestseller, the time travel tale of the Kennedy assassination. If you have read this book, you will be familiar with the phrase oft repeated in the story, "Life turns on a dime." One moment you're  a current-day schoolteacher in a run-down cafe, the next you are banging down doors in a Dallas book depository, 1963. What impact will each decision make? Life turns on a dime.

King's book is fiction, of course, but the theme is all truth. One minute you can be a typical suburban mom with a decent wardrobe, lazy weekends, some free time and spare cash, then the next day you're, well, me. I've given up any attempt to wear clothing that isn't black, navy blue or dark green (the approximate color of regurgitated goat spit), my days are consumed by goat care, goat projects or shrubbery-scavenging, and already I am a Gold-Card member at the local feed store. How did this happen?

In elementary school, my daughter was invited to a friend's house for a playdate. When I dropped Emily off, I met the child's mom, who proudly showed me her dozen-or-so goats (pets!) and confessed, "When I'm having a stressful day, I just tell my family not to bother me for an hour, and I go sit with the goats." Noticing the solitary lawn chair in the meadow, I recall thinking, "This woman is nuts! Am I really leaving my daughter here?" (Sadly, this family no longer lives in the area - what a great mentor she could be!)

Saturday was a crazy day. I got up early for a development yard sale (my most favorite activity/addiction), but on my way there I drove by a house with a large doghouse for sale out front. My "goat house radar" went on high alert, and I pulled into the driveway. (Em and Elliot are still living in a plastic box designed to hold trash cans...) Turns out, amazingly, this wooden shelter had been custom-built for two pygmy goats (!!) who had been given to a farmer when their owner had zoning conflicts. Also, the woman mentioned casually, she had 3 rolls of 6-foot high goat fencing with stakes, feeding buckets, some leftover goat medicine, and a large goat toy. (They make these?? Where? Goats-R-Us?) By this point I realize I am salivating and have to turn away to discreetly wipe the drool off my face. I never made it to the development yard sale (having handed over all my cash here), and it took me 4 trips back and forth to fit everything in my minivan (along with a cute matching chicken house for a friend).

At home, my husband had decided to tear apart the girls' old swingset and use the wood to create a deluxe goat jungle gym, complete with ramps, slides and multiple-level platforms. Helping with this took the rest of the day, and just as we were thinking about supper the phone rang and it was a local 4-H goat leader whom I had contacted some time ago about help with hoof trimming, but he had been away until now...We left supper on the table, loaded the goat boys into the van and headed off for a field trip. (The verdict was, my trimming was not awful - he made a few corrections and gave wonderfully helpful advice...) And finally it was dark, everything was cleaned up and put away, that miraculous time of night when I get to decide between a good book on the couch, the TV remote or a plate of nachos (or maybe all three!), but as I contemplated my options I realized there was really one place I wanted to be...

I went out on the deck and sat with the goats.

How to Take Your Goat for a Walk...

If your fenced yard does not contain enough of the "coarse roughage" (wild weeds) which is crucial to the health of your goat's rumen (complicated 4-stomach digestive system), you have two options: either you can constantly go out and harvest weeds to bring to your goat, or you can take the goat to the weeds. After several months of hauling wagons full of weeds into our yard, we decided to give Option 2 a try. Here is a step-by-step procedure, in case you want to attempt it.

First, go to yard sales and buy every dog collar and leash you can find. Bargain a little. Tell sellers the collar is for your newborn baby goat and you may get a price break. Don't worry about size - most will not fit anyway but the most unlikely-looking one will be perfect. What works for one goat will not work for another. Avoid cat collars - they are too flimsy and most goats will simply eat them in one bite (the collar, hopefully not the cat!) Metal is always better than fabric. Items previously worn by pit bulls are ideal.

After you have tried all the collars on your goat, choose the one that has not been chewed through, connect all the leashes together, grab a "shaker" of animal crackers and off you go. One of two things will happen - either the goat will crouch down and dig in its hooves (yes, all 8 of them!), refusing to move, or you will find yourself suddenly flying through the air as your goat takes off at breakneck speed. Leave extra time to unwrap your goat from fence posts, trees, tire swings and other objects. Never try this alone - but if you must, take a cell phone along in case the goat wraps the leash around you so many times that you begin to suffocate and need to call 9-1-1. The ideal ratio is one person per goat; if you attempt to "walk" 2 goats at a time because no one else is home, you will never do it again. Trust me on this.

Once you have reached a weedy spot, connect your goat to a heavy object like a cinder block or a metal stake in the ground. If you have 2 goats, use algebraic formulas to calculate the proper distance to tether them : not too close or they will tangle themselves in a huge knot, not too far apart or they will become hysterical at being separated. Ideally, consult a calculus student to help with this. Then, show them the weeds. You may need to mimic eating some weeds to demonstrate why they are there. If they still stare at you blankly, pick weeds and hand-feed them. Watch carefully : a goat will not be able to chew its own collar, however, it is very easy to chew through another goat's collar.

And sometimes the goat will have so much fun in the weeds, he will refuse to go back home and you will just have to carry him!

Eat This, Not That...

Recently a friend asked if she could borrow a goat for a day - she wanted to have all the weeds and brush cleared from her yard. Yeah, right! I told her she was welcome to "borrow" both goats (one would be too lonely) for as long as it took. However, I really didn't want to lose a good friendship, so I had to be honest and confess that it is unlikely the goat boys would eat any weeds at all. Valuable shrubbery, freshly-planted annuals, tomato plants - absolutely. Clothing from the washline - no question. Entire shoelaces from your new pair of sneakers - in a minute. Tenacious weeds taking over your yard - not even if they were served on a platter! What they mostly love are dried-up dead leaves, but these are hard to come by in the summer...

I suppose some goats do eat "anything" -  but certainly not Emerson and Elliot. There are actually only two kinds of weeds on our property that they like. One is a leafy thing with purplish flowers, abundant and easy to pick (of course it doesn't grow in their area, so we pick bunches from the field each morning). I'm still trying to figure out their schedule, as some days they completely ignore this treat, while other days they nibble away...I think it might have to do with odd/even days or phases of the moon. But we keep trying. The one weed they adore, however, is a thick-stemmed prickly item that grows some four feet tall; this requires gloves and garden shears to "harvest" from the bank below our driveway. The goats eagerly devour the foliage, leaving us a pile of long, spiky stems to dispose of. Again, this unfortunately does not grow in the yard where the goats live, although Emily and I have discussed transplanting a patch of it along the side of the house. Once the lilac bushes are all eaten, there will be a perfect spot...A few nights ago we almost had a tragedy involving my husband and the gas-powered weedwacker. Apparently he hadn't noticed the goats' penchant for these unsightly plants, and was starting to cut them down!! Fortunately Emily is a fast runner and dashed outside to intervene, yelling "No, Dad! Not the special weeds!"

It is probably a good thing we have no close neighbors.

Yesterday at a yard sale we absolutely hit the jackpot. The sale was in an upscale neighborhood a few miles away, a development with spacious homes, perfect lawns, long driveways lined with mature trees...We found a few good books and a cute t-shirt, not a bad haul for a dollar. Walking back up the driveway, Emily and I both saw it at the same time - there, in the front yard under a majestic oak tree, a huge branch covered with dead leaves, obviously blown down in a recent storm. We were both thinking the same thing - this would keep the goats busy for hours! Emily said, "Mom, should I go ask her?" I looked back - the lady of the house was busy making change for another customer. Really, we would be doing her a favor - what use would this family have for a dead oak branch...unless they too had backyard goats...and I was pretty sure the zoning wouldn't allow that here. It was not a hard decision. "Quick, Emily, you drag the branch while I unlock the van..." You just never know what treasures you'll snag at a yard sale!

The Horrors of Hoof Hacking - a How-(not)-To

My hands are shaking, my back is killing me, and I am bruised all over - just another ordinary evening as a goatherd...Tonight's fun activity: hoof trimming. Basically, goats were designed to live somewhere in the wilds of Tibet, where their hooves are kept naturally worn down by running and jumping on rocky outcrops. Domesticated goats, however, lack this advantage and require monthly hoof trimming by their owners. (I did try running them up and down the driveway hundreds of times to simulate Tibetan terrain, but all that I gained was a lot of exercise myself chasing them away from the road.)

With a cooperative goat, years of experience and just the right tools, this might be an easy task. For us, it was a nightmare. We took advantage of the rainy day (if you trim on a dry day you are supposed to "soak" the hooves first by having the goat stand in a basin of water - ours won't even walk on wet grass so that was never an option.) Stations, everyone - I am the trimmer, Emily is the goat-holder, and Megan is the feeder-of-animal-crackers. We started with Elliot. First problem - the goat will not hold still. (Imagine trying to do this to your dog.) Second, I have no idea what I am doing. I've read the books and watched a dozen you-tube videos, but nothing prepares you for taking razor sharp trimmers and chopping off chunks of animal feet. One book advised us to shave off thin pieces a little bit at a time, but I also saw a video where a woman literally sat on her goat and hacked off pieces roughly the size of my thumb (incidentally, what I was really hoping not to do - most documented "owner injuries" occur during hoof trimming; wonder why...) We tried singing to Elliot to calm him. No offense to "Sleeping Beauty" (that song always soothed my own infants!) but that was about as helpful as politely requesting his cooperation. Only when his eyes glazed over in a catatonic sugar-high from about a pound of animal crackers was I able to get anything accomplished.

With their "cloven hooves," each goat actually has 8 hooves you need to trim. (And "trimming" is not an accurate term, either - you trim toenails or cat claws - this is more like slicing off hunks of the foot.) The sides are carefully snipped until you see white (after white apparently comes spurting red blood, if you go too deep) while the back of the hoof is rubbery and very difficult to grip with the trimmers, like the sole of a sneaker. There is no gentle snipping here - this is where I finally got brave and started hacking away. Luckily - no bleeding (at least not from the goat...)

End result after 2 goats, 16 cloven hooves, about an hour and a small fortune in snacks: the goat boys' feet look nothing like the "after" photos in my favorite goat manual, but at least I see some improvement. Maybe next time will be better. However, I have also contacted a real estate agent in Tibet, in case we never get the hang of this...

Embarrassing Shopping Anecdote...

When you are getting goats, there is so much to learn...I got several how-to manuals from the local library, taking random notes on scraps of paper and then keeping them in a file. We started out with just fencing, grain and hay, but I quickly realized I needed to make a major excursion to the local feed store for all the other "goat necessities" which apparently no responsible goat owner would ever be without - hoof trimming tools, Blu-kote, BloodStop, pine tar, cornstarch, spare vaccines and antibiotics, mineral licks, vitamin B1 supplements, 14.6% feed - the list was extensive (and going to also be quite expensive, I feared). I found most of the things scrawled on my paper, but could not locate one item, which I had written next to the mineral supplements - nannyberries. I figured this was probably a chewable supplement (like you give your children) but wasn't sure if it was just for nanny (female) goats or if my bucklings needed them too. Maybe it would say on the bottle, if only I could find them on the shelves...

Perhaps I am not getting enough sleep lately, but apparently "nannyberries" are not actually a vitamin supplement - but rather a delicate euphemism for the berry-shaped droppings my goat boys excrete in large quantities - in other words, goat poop. Why can't these authors just say what they mean??

And if you are wondering whether I actually asked the store clerk where I could purchase a bottle of nannyberries, well, I'm going to have to plead the fifth on that one!

Best . Day . Ever. (by Elliot)

We had the best best day today (right, Emerson?) The peoples, all four of them, played with us in our yard the whole day long. There was no big yellow bus taking them away, no time we had to be all alone and cry for them to come back. They were just there! All day!! They even brought toys to play with, big metal sticks and this very fun thing for us to jump in and out of...

They must have finally realized Emerson and I don't like grass all that much, so they made a big hole for us, and we ate all the delicious tiny roots that were in the hole. So much better than regular old weeds! We made sure to stay right close by them the whole time. Only one time they left, and they sat on the deck (without taking us!) and we smelled yummy people food smells, so we cried loudly the whole time in case they forgot about us. I hope we do this every day!

Goats: Running the Numbers

Number of goats Emily has: 2
Number of years in the average goat's lifespan: 12
Number of years until Emily leaves for college: 2
Number of colleges I have found (on vast online searches) which allow BYOG (Bring Your Own Goat): 0

(I'm not a math whiz, but is anyone else seeing a problem here?)

Number of years a goat can live if it is especially well cared for: 20 (hmmm...makes you think)

Number of days we have had goats: 79
Number of days in 12 years: 4383
Number of days left: 4304 (unless we pamper them, then up to 7226)

Number of chapters in most goat manuals devoted to raising goats for profit: 4
Number of chapters devoted to having goats as pets: 0-1

Number of plants poisonous to goats: 68
Number of these plants growing on our property: 12
Number of these plants our goats have definitely eaten: 4 (yikes, and we just noticed avocado is on the list!)

Number of times a day our goats are fed: 2
Number of times a day we sweep, scoop or shovel up goat poop: immeasurable (it would probably be  easier to count the minutes we are not doing this)

Number of times a day I ask myself, "Why didn't we just get a kitten?": also immeasurable

                                Physical, emotional, and financial cost of 2 pet "goat boys": Priceless

Bungees, and "bucklings no more"

First, if you are squeamish or of delicate sensibilities, stop reading now. this is not the post for you.

Ok, non-squeamish friends of my goats, here's last night's tale...I arrived home from work at midnight, but unfortunately I forgot to douse my headlights at the end of the driveway so the goats woke up and knew I was home. (Usually we pull in very quietly, no talking, wait for passing traffic to mask the closing of the car door...) Since it was raining, I decided to coax them away from the gate and back to their warm and dry Tupperware House in the yard. Reaching down to pet Elliot, I discovered he had a bungee cord wrapped around his back. Where this came from I have no idea. When I left for work earlier in the day, the girls had the goats on their collars and leashes eating weeds in the lower fields, but how the bungee cord came into play will remain one of those unsolved mysteries of life. He was very glad to be relieved of it, however.

In the dim moonlight, I could see that the goats had been in their shelter most of the evening as it was quite full of droppings, so I grabbed a handy dustpan and brush (GOAT TIP: Have these everywhere), knelt down, and swept out the house. Toward the back I saw what appeared to be rock of some sort (how on earth did that get in here?) so I reached in to remove it. Lo and behold, it was not a large stone, as I surmised, but rather the answer to a question which has plagued our family for a month or so:

When you take your bucklings to be "banded" (neutered) and a very tight rubber band is stretched around their little-boy sacs, how long does it take for the sac to completely shrivel up and fall off? Well, in Ellie's case, we know know the answer - 43 days, and one night. (Emerson lost his last weekend.) So there I was at midnight, in the dark, in the rain, in my work clothes, holding a dry and shrivelled, fluorescent blue (that's a topic for another day) and finally detached sac of goat testicles.

You know that moment when your child loses their first tooth and you want to save it forever in a little memory box? Yeah, this was not one of those moments.

Do cats and goats get along?

When there's only one lap available for two goats and one cat, you just need to share. (The secret is getting them in the right order - small, medium, large!)

The Goat Boys: Up Close and Personal

As a mother of twins, I know the importance of acknowledging each child's unique and different characteristics...so here is a glimpse into the personalities of "the goaties."

Meet Elliot, or as we call him, Ellie, Leelee, or AG (Annoying Goat) One. The larger of the two by some ten pounds,  he is Steinbeck's Lenny to his smaller brother 's George. Loveable and trusting but not the brightest buckling, he is a follower, rarely straying far from his brother or his "peoples." His favorite place to be is on your lap - adorable when we first brought him home but somewhat daunting now as, at thirty pounds, he lunges onto the lap of anyone sitting in his vicinity. (For a short while I worried I had a blood clotting disorder until I realized that the plethora of semi-circular bruises on my thighs were the same shape as Ellie's hooves!) A snuggler, he loves kisses and watches us always with those huge blue eyes. Ellie is a big scaredy-cat, terrified of rain and storms (when he finds refuge on the windowsill overlooking our kitchen sink, shaking until the weather calms). All of our family members have taken turns sitting with Ellie in the Tupperware House during storms (including my husband, during a recent tornado watch, which I found out later.) El is also very attached to his security sweatshirt, which he sleeps with every night.

Then we have Emerson (yes, as in Ralph Waldo), Emmie, AG Two, or as we often call him in frustration, Demon Spawn. (I am not proud of this, but if you lived with the rascal...) Em was the runt of the litter (his mother had four kids), but what he lacks in size he makes up for in pure energy. He is like DC Comics' "The Flash," and when he takes off running no one can catch him. A month ago he ate an entire holly bush in our yard (before we saw it on the "poisonous plants for goats" list) - and we attributed his behavior to the main side effect of holly ingestion, which is hyperactivity. However, the holly has long cleared his system and he is now working his way through the lilacs (a goat-safe shrub, though I really wish he'd eat a weed once in a while!) and still as crazy as ever. He can shred an entire Sunday newspaper into tiny pieces in about ten minutes. Em is fearless, plays outside heedless of thunder and lightning, and will only be a lap goat when his endless leaping, running and wild antics have driven him to complete exhaustion. Somewhat scrawny and a bit skunk-like in his appearance, he is a showoff and will eagerly do tricks just to impress us (though he'd never turn down an animal cracker either!) Gotta love you both, Goat Boys!