Air's Wild Acres

Yes, and all the other lessons I’ve learned from my bucks (male goats) in two years.

In case you didn’t know, intact male goats are disgusting. They pee on their faces to attract the female goats, which is why they’re so dang smelly, and they have strong opinions about what the ladies should be doing with their lives, specifically, capitulating to the male’s desires. They exhibit their strong egos through an aggressive form of grunting, pawing and humping, sticking out their tongue, and generally driving the ladies mad with their obnoxious noises and body language.

When it comes to managing our animals, the biggest limitation we have is keeping male goats. They will escape and deconstruct fences in tbe process. If you don’t have the resources (time, money), to invest in good fencing, like us, you will likely end up with babies at weird times of the year (like us).

Depending on where you keep the boys, you may also have a man funk emanating around your property at all times (from the pee beards). Some say that if they are too close to the dairy mamas during milking, this man funk will also affect the milk’s flavor (ie, that’s why milk tastes “goaty”), but I call bullshit on that. Bangs was with the gals for months while I milked them last year, and it did not affect the flavor at all. Granted, I’m not writing a dissertation on goats, so I’ve only superficially looked at the literature, but I cannot find any information on the impact or outcomes of a male goat on milk flavor. For example, the distance they should be from does in milk, exposure time, retention in milk flavor, if the hormones change any other characteristics besides flavor, etc. If anyone knows where this information exists, please share it with me.

We have two breeding males: Bangs and Fire, but we’re 95% certain Bangs is the star of the show. He was never disbudded (his horns weren’t removed as a baby), so he’s more dominant, and Fire seems more food motivated than lady motivated. We’ve had them for about two years, and in that time, we’ve never been able to time kidding for when we actually want kids, rather than when Bangs chooses. Theoretically, because they can’t be with the ladies year round, they have each other during their off season to pal around and do weird boy things.

With all of these problems, specifically his ability to walk under, over and practically through any fence we make, keeping Bangs has not been an easy choice. I have tried multiple methods for containing him (doubling the fence, building it taller, dragging metal fence panels around to create a stronger fence, temporary electric fence, even putting a harness on him and tying him to a tree), and without fail, he found the weaknesses in both my emotional energy and whatever containment I built for him.

After much emotional turmoil, I finally acknowledged that maybe Bangs wasn’t the right animal for us. We are not a high level working operation here and we generally keep each animal on our property for a specific reason: because we love them and appreciate all of their efforts to either provide us food, or support some other specific goal of ours at the farm. We are fortunate in that we don’t have to be as profit motivated as some with our farming operation (within reason), so we can keep a limited number of animals that do not provide any source of income—like our two Nubians and our old adopted goat Harley—so choosing to rehome, sell or otherwise move an animal on to other pastures is a challenging decision, and one I don’t make lightly.

I have offered Bangs on various sites we use in our area to repasture animals, but the people who reached out were not prepared to deal with a challenging brat, or as is the case when dealing with anyone on the internet, they were extremely flakey. I could not responsibly send Bangs to a new home when the potential new owner clearly has no idea what they’re doing (I’ve been there, and it’s not going well). Or, worse, if they aren’t responsible enough to read the information I send them about him. 

We spent the last week improving a pen for Bangs, so he’s still here for the very immediate future. When I initially drafted this blog, I thought I had about two weeks until my dairy mama’s would give birth, meaning about 4-6 weeks until they’re in heat again and we run the risk of Bangs escaping again and more off season babies. However, the first gal (Phoebe!) had her baby yesterday afternoon!!

So if the new, heavily fortified pen can’t contain Bangs, then he is finally, and officially, out of here. In the interim, he will have one last chance for love with the two older Nubians, Rosie and Loretta. We put him and Fire in the new pen on Sunday, and surprisingly, he’s doing fine so far. However, the Nubians have been complaining nonstop and are not happy at all with this new location for whatever reason (I’m guessing separation anxiety from the bigger feeder). They’re both old ladies who can’t have babies, so they’re a good distraction for Bangs without resulting in more goats for us to manage. We can’t tell if their lack of impregnation is because they’re too old or Bangs is too short, but it’s not for his lack of trying, that’s for sure. He’s on a short leash, and we’ll probably know his fate by mid- to late February.