Taming the Runaway Boy Goat
December 19th, 2013 · 1 Comment · Posted in farming
Every day since Thanksgiving, I’ve been visiting our escapee goat buckling at a nearby vacant house where he’s taken up residence. Morning and afternoon, I bring him a bucket of grain. Extremely skittish, he used to run off at the sight of me. With the promise of grain, I’ve been drawing him closer to me day by day. He now eats out of my hand.
The last week has been rough on him. He’s used to grazing the lawn around the house, but that’s all been covered with about nine inches of snow. As best I can tell, he hardly moves from the rear of the house and then sticks to a narrow track around footprint. Recently overnight temperatures have plunged below zero. I see him shivering with cold, and yet he’s barely touched a small pile of hay I left for him.
Although he starts at any sudden movements, he now allows me to scratch his face and around his ears. I figure he’s not going to get any closer than this: It’s time to think seriously about a capture.
The plan I have in mind is to grab him by the horns while his head is in the feed bucket and pin him down while cohorts tie him up. My sheep mentor, Ashley, has she and her brother would help. We could then load him into the back of the pickup and drive him the short distance to our property.
But where to put him once we get there? I had hoped to have permanent fencing installed around the goat enclosure by now, but that hasn’t happened. What’s more, I had to turn off the juice to the portable electric fence because of the snow. That leaves the permanent paddock where the sheep and Jersey heifer reside. The buckling would probably get along fine with the other livestock. But I’ve been opening the gate to the paddock each day and giving the animals access to a larger pasture–also enclosed with temporary electric wire. There’s no way I could let the boy goat loose in there. His movements would have to be controlled.
I’ve consulted with the breeders who sold me the buckling and their vote is with the permanent paddock and placing him with the other animals. But they’ve discouraged me from somehow tethering him inside the paddock, saying I’d risk injuring the other animals. So until we build permanent fencing around the goat pen, we’d have to figure out a way to keep him in the paddock while we release the sheep and heifer into the winter pasture each day.
I’m open to suggestions. Before we go ahead and wrangle the boy goat, if readers have any ideas on how we can best catch him and where to put him after that, please send them along. I’m hoping to get this done before Christmas.
Do you have room to set up a small pen in the run in shed? It doesn’t have to be very big. Even 6′ X 6′ would work.
I agree that tethering him with the other animals loose is a bad idea. Too easy for animals to get tangled in the rope. I have my mare out grazing around my tethered goats but everyone’s trained to ropes, so I don’t worry. But your animals aren’t used to that type of environment.
Plus, once you have the buckling caught, you’re going to want to work with him to get him bonded to you and trained. Plus you may need to rebuild some of the trust. So keeping him stalled for a while wouldn’t be a bad idea.