Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

So, one does wonder why one would allow the goat to starve to death.   Why 
not give the silly thing to someone who might appreciate it and continue to 
pamper it OR give it back to the woman who gave it to you.  OR make the 
effort to wean it onto "rough" living?  OR refuse to take the animals to 
begin with unless it was all simply to prove a point.

Goats aren't terribly stupid animals and it isn't that hard to "reeducate" 
them.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>
> Obviously I have.  Not voluntarily prehaps but I've done it several times 
> and
> not just with goats.  A good friend is the poster child goatatericist,
> thoroughly eaten up with it.  She keeps some 35 goats on three acres and 
> almost all
> of that is dense forrest.  That's an extreme example, I know, but 
> obviously
> she must import nearly all the food the goats eat and manage all the 
> problems
> that intense concentration demands.  Several times over the past 25 years 
> she
> has shown up at our farm with the goat that was going to be the salvation 
> of our
> herd, improve the blood line, with all goatiana bells and whistles going. 
> A
> goat that was giving eight pounds (yes, the everlasting 'pounds') of milk 
> a
> day within a week would drop to two, then dry up, when it ceased to have 
> the
> concentrated diet.  Several of them sickened.  One great, wonderful 
> bloodline
> billygoat starved itself to death when the rest of the goats would go off
> browsing and he'd stand there and baaa for the feed bucket.  Oh, yes 
> indeed, I've
> done the experiment and seen it done many more times by others.