Return of the Prodigal Goat
December 30th, 2013 · 4 Comments · Posted in farming
He’s back!
We have our boy goat again. And all it took was a month of patience, a leather collar and a length of chain.
For those of you unfamiliar, we had been missing a young Kiko buckling nearly two months. He was supposed to grow into the stud for a small meat goat operation on our farm, but not five minutes after bringing him home from a breeder, he darted under the bottom wire of our perimeter fence and disappeared into thick woods.
He was still wearing a nylon collar and leash.
There was no sign of him after that–not a peep–and we searched weeks in vain. We assumed he starved to death or was eaten by coyotes. But just before Thanksgiving an excited neighbor told us a goat wearing a collar had been sited on a nearby property.
In fact, he’d taken up residence on the grounds of a vacant house within eye shot of our own farm. He was fit and hardy, grazing an expansive lawn and eating dried fruits off the shrubbery in the front yard. He endured temperatures that occasionally dipped well below freezing overnight.
We were elated to find him, but faced a new dilemma: How were we supposed to catch him and bring him home?
Somehow, he had managed to extricate himself from the collar and leash he’d been wearing when he escaped. I found them lying on the front stoop of the vacant house.
We imagined all sorts of elaborate scenarios for a capture, including finding someone with a dart gun who might tranquillize him into submission. Where’s Marlin Perkins when you need him? Readers suggested snaring him with a lasso or luring him onto a trailer with a female goat. Others proposed erecting some sort of fence around him.
Meanwhile, I began visiting him regularly with a bucket of grain. Over time, instead of running away at the site of me, he began to anticipate my arrivals and greet me with genuine interest. Eventually, I had him eating out of my hand, and he allowed me to stroke and pet him.
As the following series of photos shows, it was not such a stretch from there to put a new leather dog collar him while he was eating and attach a length of chain I’d rigged to the back of our pickup. Once he was secured, I lifted him into the truck for the ride home.
For the time being, we have him tethered inside a pen I built in the livestock shelter using two 10-foot lengths of metal fence. It’s the best we can do until we can construct a more secure goat enclosure in the spring. Meanwhile, we’ve brought the girl goats–Dolly and her daughter Tanner–into the paddock to keep our boy company. He seemed to be in a bit of shock when he first arrived. But two days later, he’s settling in, eating hay and socializing with the other animals through the fence.
We’re calling him Tigger.
I continue to visit him with grain and lots of reassuring words and affection. We hope he feels welcome enough this time to stick around.
This has been a wonderful story about your “Tigger.” Glad he is back to his rightful place.
That is such good news!
I was think of you and your goat when we had a visitor to our street – a runaway billy goat! His fence was washed away when the Brook flooded at Christmas, so he went walkabout and ended up in my neighbours back garden. I heard her shouting and banging on the window, then she called my mobile to ask if I had the phone number for D who has a smallholding on the edge of the village. The phone went dead, so I went to see what was going on… only to be spotted by the goat, who galloped after me. By the time I’d reached my friend’s front door, he was right behind me and had me pinned against the door! My friend’s husband opened the door enough for me to squeeze inside and then slammed it before the goat pushed in too. We managed to call the goat around the back while I escaped out the front, on my way home I met some other neighbours who had seen D searching for his goat! So soon owner and goat were reunited, D just tickled ‘Billy’ behind his ears and said ‘Come orn Billy yew silly owd thing’ and they walked home together.
Billy was HUGE, very hairy and very very smelly.
Happy New Year! Mind how you go on that ice!
Celia, I’m trying to picture you being chased by a billy goat. Great image.
Yay! You got him! What a hilarious episode in farming!