Horny Goats, okay...Goats with Horns

LegatoGelato

          Smooth Taste…Island Pace

Horny Goats

          For this entry, I am getting up on one of my soapboxes. That’s a strange expression, isn’t it? I’ve never actually seen a soapbox, and can’t imagine why the soap came in a box. I guess people would buy an entire year's worth at once. Still, how many bars of soap can you use in a year? It’s probably from a time when laundry was washed with bars of soap – like the Sunlight washing bars you can get at some grocery stores. I can envision using them by the box. But I digress – sorry

          This treatise will be why goats should NOT have horns. This last weekend, at the 99^th Coombs Agricultural Fair there were two horned goats entered into the show. The owners, new to goats and goatkeeping, felt that if God put them there then there must be a reason. The owner was wrong, not God. God has reasons beyond what we can comprehend.

          Goats grow horns because breeders haven’t found a way to eliminate them. A small percentage of goats are born polled (naturally hornless) and throughout the last 200+ years goat keepers have tried to use the polled animals to eliminate horns. Unfortunately, the gene for a polled goat is also related to fertility and hermaphrodites. If two polled animals are bred, there is a good chance that some of the kids will be intersexed – neither completely female nor male. They look like females but don’t have the reproductive organs to get pregnant. Moreover, in a dairy you need a pregnancy for a doe goat to milk. It would be very disappointing and expensive to raise a baby doe, breed her, and keep her around for upwards of 18 months for her to turn out sterile.

          Reasons the new guy was wrong:  Goats don’t use their horns for defense – they can but as a small mammal on the lunch menu their strength is running, dodging and being smarter than the predator, they can generally go where the predator can’t follow (cliffs, up trees…). When the herd is threatened, they all face the predator in a large fan shape crowd and bolt off in different directions, confusing the hungry predator.
          Goat’s heads are extremely hard as well – they don’t need poky horns to do damage. An adult doe’s head is so hard that a .22 bullet will not pierce thru the skull from the front.
          Does that have horns will use them on other goats in their herd. We have only had two goats with horns – both came to us as adults – and both of them were very free with whacking, poking and slicing other goats in the herd. We had a number of cuts caused by one doe especially.
          Young goats with horns get their horns stuck in wire fences all of the time. Once they are stuck, they yell and scream until you rescue them. Rescuing is fraught with difficulty as they struggle against you manipulating their horns and thrash around. We have had to cut many a wire fence getting the idiots out. In addition, they don’t learn from it, some have to be rescued every single day.
          Then there is the damage that the does can inflict on people. I speak from experience on this point. My old girl Sugar came with horns; she was my goat, totally in love with me. She would call to me, come and be near me when I was in the yard or we were out with the herd on a walk. She would give me all her milk while she held out on Karen. She would threaten the dogs if they came near me and never, ever used her horns or swung her head at me. One day I was feeding her and bent down as she lifted her head – her horn hit me about ½ a centimeter below my right eye – my eye swelled and I had extensive bruising on my cheekbone. Too close for comfort.
          Our other doe, Little Orphan Nanny (didn’t name her) was a bit freer with her horns and ended up slicing Sugar’s udder. The 6 cm cut cost $200 at the vet to have sown up and caused Sugar a lot of pain and discomfort.
          We disbud all our baby goats when they are 4 to 9 days old. It hurts them so we give them painkillers ahead of time. However, for 2 minutes of pain we are saving them a lifetime of trouble, and saving us the pain & expense as well. The babies get a bottle after the disbudding and then they are ready to rock and roll. It is unpleasant but necessary.
          So – Don’t buy a goat with horns and get your baby goats disbudded at 4 to 9 days!