Ram, Bam, thank you Ma'am

Toffee casts a discerning eye

It had to happen one day. As the goat girls have grown up we decided it was time for them to move in society and meet boys. It is a bit unfair, rather like an arranged marriage, when the only boy you get to meet is chosen by another and then you have to share with your sisters. None-the-less the anticipated meeting of the sexes has taken place and the girls took everything in their stride.

Bill's arrival was a quiet affair. After selecting him from the local dating agency, we paid the gigolo master a retainer and arranged transport. Before the girls could get too excited on the day it was decided to give them a dose of drench and a basic physical to ensure that they could stand up to the rigours of courtship. Our trusting young ladies came to our call for the offered treats of broccoli bushes and other garden greens and there we set upon them.

Bill comes to visit

Catching a goat is an interesting activity. Having short hair they cannot be grasped by the pelt be it short and curly or fluffed up in its winter thickness but nature obviously foresaw this necessity and thus gave the goat handles. I think goats are of the opinion that their horns are for such useful things as scratching, headbutting and locker room comparisons but really they serve as excellent appendages for grasping and restraining the animal. So each girl in turn found herself rough handled as Lyn and I inexpertly captured and held her to receive her dose of 'medicine'. It was all over quickly and with treats all round to distract them the girls shook off the experience and went back to life as usual. Meanwhile, at the other end of the paddock and out of sight, their new friend awaited.

Rather than just let Bill out of the truck and allow him find his own way, we decided that introductions were in order. So while Ross, Sharon and I stood guard over the billy and watched with fascination as he prepared himself by applying the goat version of cologne (a quick piss on the beard), Viv and Lyn went to fetch the girls. As their 'maas' came closer, Bill got more interested. He'd been living in a segregated dorm with a bunch of other blokes where it was hard to tell who smelt of what and now a whole new vista was opening before him. It was time to go to work.

Polly is targeted by lusty billy

Goat courting is quite an entertaining business and we wondered how long things might take and who would be the first of the girls to fall under the spell of romance. After the aforementioned application of Brut 33 goat style, Bill wasted no time on formalities. No introductions or persuasive words, simply a nose to the rump with the question, "are you ready for it?" The negative response to this question is simply to ignore the question and to walk away while the positive seems to be a vigorous wagging of the tail. The billy continues by wiping his cologne scented beard down the lady's flank and poking out his tongue whilst rolling his eyes in what looks like the suggestive leer of a dirty old man waiting at a school bus stop. All charm!!

Bill makes the opening moves

As all parents know, when their kids come to courting age, there is not much you can do to guide their choice of partner. Hormones being what they are, what one finds obnoxious another will find irresistible and it's often the quiet demure young ladies who will fall for the rakish gentlemen and before you know it their reputation is in tatters. Such was our experience with the goat girls. We've watched them grow, enjoyed their little character traits and assigned virtues and flaws to each one. The 'butting' order is firmly established and though they hang together, we suspect that, like any group of girls, they have cliques which change as often as the weather. We thought we knew them; adventurous Toffee, dominating Molly, the matron of the group, sly Sugar who is not adverse to getting a nose into whatever mischief is afoot and demure little Polly who gets pushed around by the others. Obviously the first one to have her head turned would be one of the most self assured, or so we thought.

Polly offers a 'come on'

I wasn't quite shocked and I don't know why I was disappointed but I was surprised to see that Bill's charms demolished little Polly's defences in no time at all. She was wagging her tail and giving him come hither looks which had him hanging out the tongue in anticipation. Ah! lost innocence! From the perspective of several weeks on, it seems that all the girls eventually succumbed to Bill's questionable charms and now he follows them docilely about the paddocks, confident in the knowledge that his cologne is still strong and he can pull the chicks anytime he likes.

As a consequence of all this activity, we are hoping to have kids come springtime. Bill will be long gone by then so he won't be teaching his pickup lines to the next generation but already Lyn is anticipating the 'cuteness' of little baby goats. The only trouble here is that said baby goats are destined for the food stores of the future. Will they get eaten or will their cuteness make it impossible to send them to the butcher? Only time will tell!!

We'd control it if we could

The thistle season is upon us and the annual thistle vendetta has been underway for some time. Several methods have been employed as we have worked to rid our small holding of these prickly affronts to good land management. Initially I attacked the slender thistles with the brushcutter, strewing mashed green foliage in a wide swathe of destruction that was very satisfying when the thistles were massed together underneath the blackwood trees. Chasing down the more patchy clumps over a wider area was tedious but the results of a thistle free paddock were worth it.

Steep slopes and rocky outcrops proved a little more difficult to work on and achieve effective control but perseverance and a keen sense of balance pushed the thistles back each year. Overalls were typically stained green and were impregnated with vengeful spines by the end of the season and I have long since abandoned the idea of washing out these residues but instead allow the vegetable matter to dry and then give the garments a good shake. Donning them once again and feeling the itchy prickle of previous battles is a bit like donning a hair shirt as a reminder that the conflict with sin is never over. In fact there are probably many metaphorical comparisons one could make between the control of noxious weeds and the journey of life but I think that on the whole of it the physical prickles are probably easier to control than the mental ones.

Once the mass thistle cull had been accomplished for the first time and we could see the contours of the land and the potential hazards on its surface, we were able to continue control in many areas simply by mowing over the emerging weeds, gradually teaching them the futility of their misguided persistence in trying to re-establish a presence in what essentially was ceded territory. On steep slopes and rocky outcrops however, the story was different. These weeds were like the guerrilla fighters, carrying on a dogged resistance in the hope of one day rallying and reclaiming the land that was once theirs. These stalwarts were not without their allies; for on the other side of the fence where the neighbour's attitude to thistles is far more tolerant, vast armies were gathering as the weeds bred indiscriminately and waited for a fair breeze to send their downy seeds skyward to land like the sleepers of espionage novels, in our paddocks, until the conditions for their uprising were favourable.

Often these guerrilla weeds would manage to go undetected long enough to produce seed and their tough, thorny stalks would wave these into the air in defiance of our version of pastoral purity laws. We found the best way to deal with those in the more difficult areas was to pull them by hand. This isn't difficult with slender thistles as their spiny defences are easily circumvented with a pair of gardening gloves but the scotch thistle can be quite a challenge and prove hardy fighters in the face of annihilation. It can be fairly punishing work, following the thistle trail, pulling them by their roots and teaching them that their kind is unwelcome on our neck of the woods. It's a bit like ethnic cleansing when you think of it and we continually reinforce our prejudices with every weed we pull, hawthorn that we poison and elder that we hack. So far we have used organic methods on the thistles and the least invasive techniques to discourage the hawthorn that in their way are far nastier than their weedy counterparts but there may come a time when bending the back to pull the weeds is less appealing than spraying some toxic substance.

Generally through summer, a walk around the property will involve carrying a hoe and chipping away at any offencive weed that pokes its head high enough to reveal its position. We are a property at war and it pays to be ever vigilant. It is a pity that the same techniques cannot be applied to the control of marauding possums and wallabies that are keen to eat just about anything that isn't a weed.

What has all this to do with goats? Well it is a long held belief of mine, perhaps based on erroneous anecdotal and possibly apocryphal information, that goats eat thistles and it was with this information in mind that I assumed that our thistle problems in at least one area of the pastures would be no more. Alas, this does not seem to be the case as thistle after thistle went ignored by the girls. They weren't interested even if you pulled the thistle and tried to feed it to them. They looked with disdain at this spiky offering and bleated their displeasure in no uncertain terms as they demanded more palatable fare and so I have been reduced to hunting the thistles down in the customary manner, pulling them from the earth and leaving them to wilt under the heat of the sun. Recent observations however, suggest that my previous assumptions may be based on more than myth and perhaps a goat needs to attain some maturity before it will include thistles in its diet. Slender thistles that escaped my previous attentions are now appearing to be flower less and being proffered a bountifully flowering scotch thistle recently, the girls showed interest in plucking off the flower buds and enjoying their delicate novelty.

It is quite amusing to watch an animal attempt to eat a thistle. Obviously they are not immune to spines and have no greater love for being prickled than do I but by careful placing of the lips and manoeuvring to the back teeth, one can crunch through the stem and claim the prize. The question is; can you rely on the goats to eat the thistles when there is so much other good food available or do you remove a potential delicacy for future consumption through a paranoia that if you don't take responsibility for the cleansing of this scourge then it will once again get out of hand? And then there is of course the ever present fact that there is an army massing on our borders and nothing will stop their insidious infiltration as soon as our backs are turned.

The Goats of Christmas Yet to Come

Summer is here and the grass is rampant. As the local farmers reap the harvest, we're vainly waiting for the goat girls to keep the growth down in the paddocks. In some places they are only just visible above the waving seed heads which, as they cure, are proving to be a tasty morsel for a discerning goat. Combine this with veggie scraps and you have nearly everything a goat could ask for. We even bought the goats a mineral lick for Christmas. This was an immediate hit with the girls giving it the rough end of their tongues for all they were worth. However, like many Christmas presents that amuse for a short time and then are cast aside, the initial response to the lick has not been repeated and it now sits as another rmonument to our infatuatiion with those of the horned species. However, through weather or animal attentions, the lick is taking on rather distorted dimensions and may well pass for a piece of modern paddock scuplture in the future.


Hopefully the new year will open a new chapter in our goat relations as we are planning to breed the girls and build a family. This could be a complicated proceedure because at the moment we have no billy and will have to seek out the expertise of neighbours as to the courting rituals that need to be observed if one is to raise a successful herd of goats. In the meantime the girls are getting sleek and fat, ever more curious and adventurous. We are getting quite attached to our horned friends, though like children, they can be quite demanding and mischievious, especially when they know treats are available.

Toffee tests soundness of walls

Lyn has been spending much of her free time building the goat shelter and as its walls rise higher it is being subjected to stability tests and quality control as one girl after another gathers her limbs and takes a spring, landing atop the wall with four footed precision and then proceeding to strut its circumference, dislodging any loose stones as if to reject imperfect workmanship. Whilst one goat performs this disarmingly clever distraction, another quietly sidles up behind the wall builder and does her best to nuzzle her way into pockets that might be hiding a pellet or two.

We have also discovered the hidden aspects of animal husbandry in the small but persistent attentions that animals need. Though there is little we can do to save the girls from the attention of leeches which often manifest on bloody forelimbs or rumps, it seems that the safe life of living in a paddock has other ramifications for domesticated animals. Goats have very active keratin producers and thus grow toenails at an alarming rate. In the wild this poses no problems as they are constantly clambering on rocks and other hard surfaces that serve to wear down nails and keep them at servicable lengths. In a paddock however, the soft footing allows these nails to grow long and luxuriant. This would be all very well if you didn't have to walk on said nails which have a nasty tendancy to curl under the hoof and not only cause discomfort but make footing more difficult.

Sugar works on her own nails

Sugar was aflicted with a slight lameness and being the new fretting parents that we are this concerned us and led us to seek more experienced assistance. Thus we were introduced to the hoof peticure, a practice so the text books tell us, that should occur about twice a year. Unlike the pampered lunacy of the human beauty treatment, a goat peticure involves a cross between wrestling and sheet metalwork as a giant pair of shears is used to clip of lumps of tough offending toenail whilst someone holds the subject goat in a less than dignified position on its rump. Apparently, you can train your goats to stand for this treatment, much like a horse allowing itself to be subjected to shoeing, but our helpful expert suggested that we shouldn't encourage such vanities in the girls or they would forever be expecting to be pampered.

This advice taken, we have observed that, far from being jealous of the attention given to Sugar, the others were all very happy to forgo such an invasive procedure. Sugar herself is now a little shy about being suubjected to more than basic attentions.

And so the goats settle in; a curiosity for visitors and a conversation topic for we as small animal husbanders; and breeding season comes closer.

Spring Time on the goat run

There can be a down side to having overly friendly animals that crowd the gateway whenever you come to visit. If we want to get through the gates now-a-days, we have to make sure that we have food to distract the girls or they simply duck behind us and escape to the wider vista of the house gardens. This isn't so bad if you just have a body to squeeze through the gap but if you are pushing the barrow or riding the mower, the goats have the upper hand every time. There's no sneaking up on them either, the girls seem to have a sixth sense that informs them when there is some activity near a gate and manage to congregate in readiness for your arrival.

Polly seems to be the most alert at this practice and is usually the first to pop up her head and notice that a human being is approaching. First one head goes up and an inquisitive gaze is cast in the direction of disturbance, followed by three more heads accompanied by a plaintive bleat before some mutual signal sets all four goats in motion and they begin their bound across the field, ears flapping in unison with their stride, to reach the gate before the food arrives.

Polly premonitious

No longer do we put the surplus silver beet in the compost for the worms. Instead, spare garden greenery is taken to the girls as a treat for the day. In addition to a steady supply of silver beet that seems constantly to be going to seed, the odd cabbage, broccoli or even strawberry plant will get the goats all excited. The worry here is however that as the grass grows and the weeds rear their ugly heads, the goats are ignoring inviting thistles and searching for more savoury tid bits. Even attempts to hand feed thistle plants have been rebuffed. Have we reared a bunch of sissy goats rather than robust garbage disposal mechanisms.

On the other side of the coin, while the goats eat of the bounty of the land, they in turn are being preyed upon. What dangerous creature lurks in the paddocks waiting to attack the unwary and reduce it to an empty husk? It's not a snake (of which there have been several sightings so far this year) but a creature of humble proportions and yet devestating impact. The activity of this creature is often evident when we find the goats red with their own blood; dramtically contrasted on Polly and Sugar's white hair. This assault is obviously perpetrated most often at night, only manifesting in the light of day and making it look like the girls have been involved in some brawl with a broken bottle. The culprit is nothing more significant than the humble leech but here acting in a feral rather than medicinal capacity and taking their fill regularly from our coddled livestock.

Neither Lyn nor I have escaped unscathed as the leeches seem to be invading the gardens as well as the paddocks and damp patches on trousers are not necessarily just the result of wading through the long grass but may be patches of blood, soaking into clothing from weeping wounds left after the leech has gone. We may need to start wearing red socks to hide the evidence and certainly give up wearing sheer tights as the welts of leech activity remain for days afterward. It's no wonder gumboots are so popular on farms.

In which the goats stay put and we build a shelter

It only took four months and a considerable amount of time and effort but finally, the goat girls seemed content to stay put. Their roaming days were over and they were prepared to settle down and perform the duties for which they were procured. It was also encumbent upon us, now that they were full time tenants, to look out for them rather than look for them. To this end, Lyn decided that they needed shelter. Not just any type of shelter but one worthy of the status of 'first goats' and a fit place to nurture the expected progeny of the future.

Our goat shelter was to be built in the time honoured tradition of animal shelters of the past. An organic statement about the marriage of the natural world and the order of domesticity. It might be the modern medium of electricity that was keeping the goats in but it would be the natural element of stone that would protect them from the elements. Using her skills as a rock wall artisan, Lyn began the labour of dismantling piles of rocks that had been put to one side during previous ploughings of the paddocks and reasembling same into an edifice that will one day delight archeaologists as they uncover the secrets of the Mole Creek Hill Top Goat Keepers.

The girls practice sheltering in the shelter circle

Playing in the paddocks in winter time is not for the faint hearted. With snow on the Tiers, cold winds and the damp of earth and grass, the elements line up to make the job hard enough but add to that the back straining work of sorting rocks and moving many that weigh more than your average ten year old from world's biggest loser and you get some idea of the effort involved. The girls however, were intrigued by the activities and showed an eagerness to participate by climbing onto and into the barrow, inspecting the selected rocks and constantly looking for a treat. As soon as the circle trench for the foundations was complete, they took up residence, using it at least as a day time solarium where they relaxed in the sun between ruminations.

One by product of goat activities (in fact of all activities in life) is the left overs that come from eating away the rampant growth of the paddocks. Little piles of goaty poo began to accumulate in the girl's favourite places, a rich source of nutriment that we coveted for garden use and as we emptied bags of pellets to feed the goats, we began to refill them with little poos. It would be nice to be able to vacuum the grass but as this isn't possible, we resorted to dustpan and brush. So far the pile of 'goat gold' is very small but expectations are strong as spring approaches and the green grass gets going.

Toffee finds the cupboard is bare

Scrounging for rocks through the long grass and then transporting them to the building site proved to be quite time consuming especially if using the manual method of loading them onto the trolley and pulling them over the uneven ground. To make this easier, we employed the assistance of our ride on mower. It proved well up to the task, able to pull over 100 kilos of rock with ease. Unfortunately, having a mower in a paddock of long grass was too much of a temptation and as we trundled back and forth to find and deliver rocks, we dropped the deck and created our own version of crop circles. The hazards of this activity were brought home on several occasions (we're slow learners) when an unseen rock lept out and attacked the mower, giving it such a fright that it threw its drive belt in protest. This meant a return to the workshop and much activity with the spanners as pulleys were released and the belt realigned. Is this like being a real farmer, spending the time between working and feeding the stock and maintaining the plant and equipment?

A routine began to develop as Haydn went off to work and Lyn entertained the goats. On the occasions when we were both away from home all day, our return was frequently celebrated (even before the obligatory cup of tea) by a visit to the goat girls, to dole out a treat and see which would tolerate a pat or scratch in return for food. The girls also began to anticipate our visits and would line up at the fence upon seeing us and begin to entertain us with the little goings on in their own world (at least I think that is what they were trying to communicate with their expressive bleats).

The goat presence also began to be felt by the foliage of the small trees that had managed to gain a footing in the paddocks despite the deprivations of the wallabies. Anything within reach was a target for the carnal appetites of the girls as they sought roughage to supplement their diet of winter grasses. Little blackwoods lost their lower limbs and shivered skeletally in the cold while the goats grew rounder and more adventurous in their appetite. We also feed them supplements from the vegie garden: carrot tops, cabages gone to seed and parsley for a bit of variety and, while these were received with enthisiasm, Molly in paricular showed no interest in greens if there were pellets to be had and to that end would stand on her hind legs to get her head into the bucket. Ah, how such things amuse us all. Now we no longer had to rely on our childrens's activities to oil the social exchange, but were able to plumb the growing pool of goat anecdotes to win rural recognition.

The Birthday Present

Life had settled into some sort of routine. Today we are goat herders, then the next we're not. The neighbours were very tolerant of our unauthorised agistment on their land (albeit in a paddock which the previous summer had been nothing but slender thistle) and must have smiled with amusement as we trudged over the same ground on one of our seemingly pointless round ups. The only saving grace in all this was the convenient fact that there was a gate on the boundary fence that made it relatively easy to move the goats from the wrong side to the right side of the fence. How we could have accomplished this otherwise was a problem that showed itself all too clearly when Toffee again made her escape.


We had done all the work. The western fence; the weakness in our defences, was now 30 cm higher with a electric wire on top. We felt optimistic that this might finally solve the problem that was taking most of our spare time to rectify. Having commissioned the wire and determined that it was live, we once again corralled the goats. Having some premonition perhaps of their final experience of freedom, they proved a little reluctant but by now they were attune to the sound of pellets rattling in the bucket and allowed themselves to be seduced by the lure of food, to give up their independence for the satiation of their appetites for exotic treats.

Toffee: First in sequence and audacity

There wasn't much more that we could do in the line of fencing so our main focus became that of making friends with the wayward girls in the grass. It was a Friday, Lyn went out for the evening so I decided to walk the perimeter, getting a bit of exercise and saying hello to the girls. I took a few treats as we had figured that this was the best way to bribe our lodgers into coming to us rather than running in the other direction. As expected, everyone was congregated in the remotest and least visible corner of the paddock. As I headed this way in the gathering dusk, the plaintive cry of a goat in distress was very evident and, sure enough, there was our Toffee, on the wrong side of the fence. Her bleating may have been a criticism of her mates who, when confronted by our new barrier had (for the moment at least) accepted that they were beaten and therefore were contentedly tearing the foliage off the prickly box and generally showing a complacent acceptance of their lot.


A little detective work showed that Toffee had used the same route to freedom that had served her well on many other occasions. She hadn't managed to leap higher but had squeezed between two strands of barb wire (leaving enough hair on both to allow even the least competent forensic investigation to determine her path to freedom). Her strident bleats and futile pacing on the other side of the fence went ignored by her colleagues and, to rub salt into the wound, I proceeded to reward the compliant goats with their now favoured treats.

Toffee was not a happy goat but there was little I could do to allow her to return to the fold with the fence now an effective barrier in both directions. I figured a night alone in the wilds might serve as a lesson and thus returned to the warmth of the house and left the goats to sort out their priorities.

Sugar & Polly stand sentinel

Morning came and with it, an opportunity to see if Toffee had learnt her lesson and was ready to come home and be a part of the flock and not a maverick, destined to forever roam on the wrong side of the law, enjoying her freedom but missing out on the companionship and rewards of being part of something greater than herself. The girls were much as I had left them the previous morning, Toffee was pacing the fence while her sisters quietly browsed the foliage and only occasionally showed awareness or concern for her plight. We spent a good hour trying to coax her along the path that she had obviously trodden many times before to get to the neighbour's paddock and thence through the gate to home but she was not in the mood to see that a temporary move away from her goal would achieve the outcome that by now both she and we, sought.

Polly the runt

We abandoned our efforts, once again rewarding the good girls and leaving the naughty Toffee to her own devices. The kids (our biological children) had come up for the week end to celebrate my birthday and we headed off to Launceston to have lunch at Joseph Chromy. Of course our way would ladies were a major topic of conversation as we caught up on Jessica's job search and Zoe's legal studies. Michael's inside knowledge of the machinations of government and Oliver's latest achievements in building the robots of the future were engrossing but it was the goats that took centre stage. Oh what a sad and empty existance we lead!!

Molly moulting

Lunch over, we headed home to continue our reunion in more leisurely fashion. As we drove up the hill to the house we looked into the paddock as was becoming our custom and were excited to see, not only the three 'good goats' but Toffee, on each side of the fence, right next to the boundary gate. With all haste, we marshalled Jess and Oli, grabbed a tin full of treats and headed into the paddock, hoping to persuade Toffee to come home. Toffee needed little encouragement. The twin enticements of food and the opportunity to rejoin her sisters, meant that she was more than willing to allow herself to be ushered through the gate and back into the home field. Our goats were once again united!!!!

Spit Roast?

By now we were beginning to despair. Perhaps we, like many would be parents, were not destined to be livestock breeders and this was just nature's way of telling us that we had not passed the natural selection criteria that leads to a life of animal husbandry. It had become a common sight as I lay abed in the morning, watching the sun begin to bathe the north facing slopes of the hill next door, to see the goat girls emerge through the braken on their daily forage through the pastures. Their presence taunted us with our shortcomings as they opted for the surrogacy of the neighbours farm over the virgin paddocks of our own. Perhaps they inately knew that we lacked knowledge and experience (demonstrated no doubt by the shiny wire and steel posts of our new fencing compared with the comfortable rust and listing wooden posts next door) and felt more secure in an area that obviously had seen the hoof print of livestock in recent times.

Up till now we had been fairly confident that we could execute a round up when the opportunity presented itself but the goats began to get wily and on several occasions evaded our overtures of benign incarceration and showed a swift turn of speed as they bolted for their gap under the fence that led to the wild lands of the bush and a place were no sane person would attempt to follow. We were at a standoff. We'd sometimes manage to coax the goats in and on such occasions they would happily take food from us, getting ever bolder in their quest for a tasty treat but other times they would evade capture only to reappear on the wrong side of the fence and quietly undermine our confidence in the doctrine of human superiority. When we did get them within the paddocks, it was never for very long and, when it came time to check on the boundries, they would demonstrate a complete lack of goat contained therein.

These were becoming expensive goats. Already the cost was in the 4 figure department with electric fencing and other gizmos, goat treats and the goats themselves. We were seeing no return on our investment in the way of shorter grass, little piles of goatie poo to fertilize the garden or the companionship of domesticated animals. We couldn't just let this continue. Perhaps we would be better off with sheep after all, something that couldn't leap moderate height fences in a single bound, some animal that wasn't smart enough to recognise our ineptitude. With these dispairing thoughts I put in a call to our local goat guru (and supplier of goats) with the thought that perhaps the goats were ripe enough to become freezer material and thus recoup some of our expenditure via the dinner table.maybe there was time for one last round up.


But no!! there may yet be a solution. One that Lyn had insisted was the obvious option from the beginning and that was to raise the height of the fence. When this was first mooted some weeks previously I had had no experience of the fun things you can do with fencing by the purchase and application of proprietary devices. It now seemed possible and even practical to  use electric wire standoffs to put another wire above the tops of the pickets. With fresh determination, vigour and enthusiasm we set about implementing this new plan.