Foodlore Library

Doe and her two new babies

It takes a special kind of person to keep goats.

Goats are cute, friendly, and an enormous amount of fun. However, they are also destructive, moody, and (in)famously insatiable. Our friend George has not always been an avid capriphile (goat lover). It was my own husband who did the terrible deed of introducing George to these wonderfully sociable four-legged fiends.

A few years ago, my hubby Scott had his own goat terrors, and eventually decided that his less-than-perfect living arrangements did not provide the best situation for the upbringing of three excitable nannies. Here's where George comes in, who, having kept pigs some years ago, decided that a new set of hoofed animals couldn’t do much harm. Apparently, George's idea was that the goats would work the land, clearing the pasture of new-growth trees and bushes and eating down the brush along the sides of the driveway. I’m sure visions of fresh, warm goat’s milk in the morning also had a bearing on his decision.

Four years and about seventeen goats later (the number is constantly changing!), George’s pasture is cleared of trees ... and everything else! Goats are predominantly browsers, like antelope, rather than grazers, like cows. This means they like to test the leaves on your best hydrangea as much as they enjoy mowing your lawn.

I have it on excellent authority that George’s wife, Joy, one of the gentlest and most mild-mannered ladies you could ever hope to meet, can regularly be seen screaming like a banshee and brandishing a broom when their little darlings have made it round to her small patch of flowers for the fifteenth time that day. I guess it’s lucky that hydrangeas flower better after a good pruning.

If you like the look of those bleached white sticks you can get in bundles from places like Pottery Barn, feed a selection of robust brush cuttings to your goats. Bingo: perfectly stripped branches, ready to put in a hefty terracotta pot and string with fairy lights.

However, dietary habits are not all that defines these creatures. After all, goats and sheep have been domesticated for some 10,000 years. (We archaeologists still debate the dates, but you can bet that such animals were used by people long before their bones started to show up conveniently in just the spot we’re digging.)

Goats are perhaps more accurately termed ‘mixed feeders’, eating hay, clover, grass, shoots, leaves, woody stems–depending on food availability and quality. In other words, if you feed them dry hay, and then they spot the first, juicy spring shoots on the (insert favored/prizewinning plant of your choice here), what do you expect them to go for? Essentially, goats are adaptable and flexible. They are also intelligent and curious, not to mention sociable. This, I’m sure, is where they get a bad rap because those positive qualities quickly translate into destructive tendencies.

Although George’s goats have their own pen, he likes to let them out and give them free run of the place every now and then. Mostly, they don’t do a huge amount of harm – and they are a useful source of amusement. I’ve drunk many a cup of tea while listening to their happy chatter and watching them climb on top of George’s shed roof (via the tractor and old bus) to reach a few low-hanging branches.

They don’t run off, either: as herd animals, they tend to hang out together, and won’t go far. Ususally they only venture just beyond the treeline, to the most interesting greenage.

They come when they’re called, and they happily follow George (or me, or whoever goes to visit). However, that’s mostly the case for girls. As with just about all girls, does are the calmer, more well-behaved members of the species. (Hang on ... doesn't that actually also apply to humans?)

Bucks, on the other hand, tend to like to declare who’s boss, and in the opinion of Billy Buck, that wasn’t George. Billy Buck was George and Joy’s pride and joy; a huge, proud alpine who on two legs stood as tall as George (and George is a big chap). Billy was handsome, healthy, wondrously fertile, and absolutely bloody-minded.

Scott provided George with a truckload of cedar boards every week for an entire summer, which George used to make his goat pen and fence in his vegetable garden (a wise move). However, Billy was staked out a little too close to the garden fence. I swear that as fast as George could get the fence up, Billy would tear it down again, using his horns like a clawhammer. George would re-stake Billy, who, as soon as anyone turned their back, would pull out his stake or slip his halter and quickly get back to tearing up the fence again. This lasted most of the summer, until George and Billy ended up in a wrestling match to once and for all decide the master of the house. Luckily, George won.

Billy Buck has since moved on to another homestead, as he managed to father just about every goat that George now owns and is thus of very little use in terms of breeding purposes.

His replacement, a miniature alpine named Little Bill, now rules the roost. He’s convinced he’s a dog, and apparently, his last owners let him sleep on the bed (if you ever met Little Bill, you would understand the face I’m pulling right now). I’m not sure how useful a knee-high buck is as breeding stock, but nevertheless, Little Bill is far less destructive than Big Billy (excepting his taste for hydrangeas). Big Billy and Little Bill notwithstanding, as a goat owner you ideally want girl goats, not boy goats. The main reason, of course, is that the does give milk, while bucks give hassle.

George’s luck has not been with him recently, though. The last two pregnancies have resulted in all boys: since goats usually have twins, that’s four more bucks. We had been waiting for his last doe to kid, and a few days ago, he called us first thing in the morning (goats seem to like to kid at 3 to 6 a.m., because it drives their owners nuts ... from whence the term “you’ve got to be kidding,” surely?) to ask for Scott’s maternity expertise.

We dashed up there to find that she’d had no problem after all, and another set of twins had arrived: a white, robust, inquisitive little goat, who was too busy checking us out to bother eating, and a petite, black little thing, nursing away, tail jiggling like crazy. George hadn’t sexed them yet–too afraid of more boys, I think.

We flipped them over to see that, naturally, chunky there was a buck, but thankfully, his smaller sibling was a doe. About time, too! The question is, what to do with all these new bucks? George is by no means a vegetarian, being an avid barbecue enthusiast, but he would no sooner eat one of his goats than his cat.

They will likely find their way to the auction, where, more’s the pity, they are more likely to be bought for food rather than breeding. Like me, George has no issue with goat meat per se–the only real issue is that these animals have been more like pets than part of a dairy herd. But the male issue aside, goat babies do mean something good: goat milk.

There are actually many more people in the world drinking goat’s milk than cow’s milk: worldwide, more people drink it than the milk of any other animal. However, many Americans brought up on the bovine equivalent have yet to be won over to the benefits of goat’s milk.

Many people complain that it tastes different, it looks an odd color, it smells ‘goaty,’ or tastes ‘barny.’ These individuals have probably not seriously tasted the stuff, or have been unlucky enough to have sampled a bad batch. When I told my own grandma I was drinking goat’s milk in my tea with George and Joy, she demonstrated her aversion by pulling a face, screwing her eyes shut, and shuddering. In reality, George’s goat’s milk tastes absolutely delicious. Some people certainly prefer it to cow’s milk, while I can hardly tell much difference on cereal or in tea (I find the quality of the tea bag a far more variable experience!).

Color-wise, it is slightly less yellow than cow’s milk, somewhat like a skimmed milk. This is due to the nature of its fat content, which is of a different kind to cow’s milk. Of the two, goat’s milk has slightly higher fat proportions, but because it contains no agglutinin, the fat particles will not cluster together. Thus, it has smaller fat globules than those in cow’s milk, and all these little lumps remain in suspension. In other words, it is naturally emulsified, and there is no need to homogenize it.

I can attest to this fact personally: when I put George’s goat milk in my tea, it doesn’t end up with those creamy little wispy trails on the surface: it mixes right in. Plus, it looks just fine sitting there in a jug, and tends to pour out all smooth, whereas our Jersey cow milk (extra super creamy, mind) likes to separate, giving us at least a couple of inches of cream per quart jar, which of course makes accurate pouring a slight issue. Either you use the separated cream, separately, or you give it a good shake. I can’t imagine that having “too much cream” could ever be a problem, but still, this issue doesn’t occur with goat’s milk.

As far as healthy living for us humans goes, the natural homogenization of goat milk is far better than the mechanically homogenized cow milk product. Studies suggest that when fat globules are forcibly broken up by mechanical means, the process releases an enzyme associated with milk fat, xanthine oxidase, which can then penetrate the intestinal wall. Once this enzyme reaches the bloodstream, it is capable of creating scar damage to the heart and arteries, and, in turn, may stimulate the body to release cholesterol into the blood in an attempt to lay protective fatty material on the scarred areas. And as we all know, extra cholesterol in our arteries isn’t good. Yuck.

Since the fat in goat’s milk is more easily digestible than cow’s milk, it is also a good option for those who may be allergic to cow’s milk. It has lower levels of lactose, and may be drinkable by people with a mild lactose intolerance. Goat’s milk also contains higher levels of proteins beneficial to humans (more similar to the ones in human milk). It forms a softer curd, making goat’s milk cheese more easily digestible, too. Although the mineral content of goat's and cow's milk is generally similar, goat's milk contains more calcium, more vitamin B-6, more vitamin A, more potassium, more niacin, more copper, and more of the antioxidant selenium than cow's milk. (It is lower in folic acid, though.) All in all, it makes for some pretty good stuff.

And the stinky myth? Not so much a myth as the result of poor barn conditions. Certain goat breeds certainly do whiff (in my opinion, South African Boers seem to be the worst, but I’ll happily recount that if anyone wants to undertake an empirical test of the issue), however it tends to be the male that produces the dominant notes of the bouquet. While  does smell no worse than their surroundings, bucks can reek something wicked. And no wonder. I have personally observed Little Bill turn and pee on his own face. Now there’s a talent! Fact is, males like to smell manly, and there’s no getting away from it.

The solution, obviously, is to get the does away from it. Generally speaking, with a clean barn and no bucks, goat’s milk will taste fantastic.

You may think this is a treatise on goat’s milk as opposed to the evil nasties of cow’s milk: not so. Hubby Scott is a cow man all the way ... but you’ll have to wait until the end of April for that story (when Blackberry is due to calf). The difference here is between treated, homogenized, pasturized, poked-about and messed with cow’s milk, or indeed anything, versus the fresh, raw, natural variety.

The point is also that poor George has TOO MANY BUCKS, and needs some ideas for what the heck to do with them. Now, in the current economic climate, don’t we all wish we had that problem?

Information from: American Dairy Goat Association, Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats

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By Gemma-Jayne Hudgell

• Animals
• goat

• Add new comment
• 73 reads