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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

Hey Melody --

> So is this behavior (play rearing & butting) limited to just billies, so
> wethers don't exhibit this behavior?  Or is it goats in general?  Or is a
> personality thing?

In general it is a goat thing, and something that they need to do (like 
puppies chewing).  What you don't want is them to EVER do it to a person.

Which sort of skips me ahead to your last question from the next post about 
why not to have a goat as a pet.  I guess what I'm meaning by "pet" is when 
people confuse an animal with a person and start treating it as though it is 
a person instead of the animal it is.  This is always bad for both the 
people and the animals involved.

> If you don't allow that behavior in your goats, what do you do to deter
> them?  I read in Carla Emery's book to smack a goat on the nose if he/she
> jumps up on people (putting hooves on people much like a dog would put his
> paws up on people).  We tried that but he was too dumb to understand the
> cause & effect.

I don't have a lot of advice on that respect because we haven't ever had to 
do much of it because we have allowed our goats to be raised with goats and 
have never tried to tame them.  At all.  I abhore bottle raised goat babies. 
I know how cute they are, I've done it, but I try very hard not to do it.  I 
think all species are best raised by their own.  What we expect out of our 
goats is to survive and to thrive with little to no input from us, to browse 
and forage vigorously, to reproduce regularly, and to milk our milkers from 
time to time.  We eat the extras or sell them.

When a mama has her babies, she is attended to for a few days by me and the 
kids, making sure things are fine and us enjoying how cute those babies are. 
But then she is left with them.  And they are all left with the whole herd 
of other animals.  After awhile, they don't want a thing in the world to do 
with any human.  Until a little later and they find out I'll sometimes have 
corn in a bucket which they will whore themselves for.  This is useful 
behavior.  I've never had the slightest bit of trouble taming one down to 
milk -- they will come for the bucket, get clipped up, and learn to stand to 
milk inside a week.


> No.  We don't play back with him when he exhibits the behavior.  The kids
> do show that they are scared (running away) which is something I have been
> teaching them not to do.  Billy seems to think that then they want to run
> and play with him then, which makes him even more excitable.

This is the nature of kids and animals it seems.  Ages ago we had geese and 
the kids learned to NEVER run from them!

If I had a goat who was butting, when he did that I would do things to him 
he hated -- like throwing him down and holding him in a totally vulnerable 
position.  Horns come in handy when doing things like this -- and believe 
me, it is no more pleasant to be butted without horns than with them <g>. 
He doesn't sound mean, like you said.  But either through reinforcement or 
through separation from humans for awhile, he needs to learn.  Watch out 
though when he gets those hormones going -- they pee on themselves and get 
real stinky and we once had one who decided I smelled good at a certain time 
of the month and he wasn't mean either but he ended up sold at auction.

Best to you,
Denise