Can We All Just Get Along?
February 2nd, 2015 · No Comments · Posted in farming
I’d love to report that our six-year-old Nubian goat, Sal, is fitting right in since joining us a couple months ago. But it’s been a long adjustment since the morning our friend Ashley called to ask if we’d adopt Sal, who otherwise had a date with the butcher.
Our Kiko goats, it turns out, just don’t have very good manners. They haven’t been taught anything about hospitality. Since they have horns and Sal doesn’t, they don’t see any problem lowering their heads and chasing poor Sal around the goat yard.
There have been some amorous moments between Sal and our rambunctious boy goat, Tigger. But not so much where the ladies Dolly and Tanner are concerned. Dolly, being a six-year-old dame herself, seems to think she owns the place. And her daughter Tanner just follows right along, menacing Sal whenever the mood strikes.
For some weeks I had to make special accommodations for Sal. At night, I’d lock her in the little goat shed to sleep undisturbed. In the morning, I locked her in the tool shed with her own block of hay. Otherwise, the goats would just chase her away from the food.
Lately, though, a kind of detante seems to have taken hold. I stopped locking Sal in the goat shed overnight because somehow she seemed to be finding a place to sleep on her own. Then one morning I found her snuggled in a a pile of straw in the tool shed, just a few feet from where Dolly and Tanner were laying together like spoons.
Sal even manages to find a place at the breakfast table. At least she manages to stuff her face without drawing the ire of the alpha female, Dolly.
Is it possible these goats might one day be actual friends?
The goats aren’t sayin’.
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