Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Disbudding goats

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Disbudding goats
  • Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:43:14 EDT



> >So, I've had it all three ways....
> I'm no authority though, I just had goats for about 6 or 7 years, so I
> will defer to Marie and James...
>

My comments are not against disbudding as much as it is about the dogmatism
of caprophiles. The incidents of which you have been informed are the first
incidents that I've even heard tell of where a goat injured another with its
horns. We hear the prohibition about the goatkeeper or milker being injured
with
horns but have you ever known this to happen? I haven't and I've been
rubbing elbows with goat keepers for decades.

Let me give comparison of what I'm talking about. In order to give the big
dairies in this state a monopoly the distribution of raw milk is illegal.
Even
if you want to say it is for pet food, you have to obtain a pet food license
and dye the milk blue. The reason? The state DoA says you might get ecoli
from the milk. Never, not one time, in the history of the state has there
ever
been a case of anyone getting ecoli from raw milk. There are several where
someone got it from pasturized milk, but never even once from raw milk. Yet
...
that's the official reason for having a law so strict that you cannot even
give away raw milk.

Like that, most goats I see around here, and there are lots now of days, most
have their horns (because they are brush goats or meat goats) and I know lots
of people who milk horned goats. I've never even heard of anyone being
injured by a goat's horns. It's a red herring. But then again, I've never
heard
of anyone's goats being injured by horns either. Lot's of incidences of
the
fool things getting their heads caught in fences, but that only means you
have
the wrong type of fence not the wrong type of goat.

A very long time ago I nearly cut my thumb off on a table saw. It split the
thumb from the nail to the joint right down the middle. It put the fear of
God in my about power tools. Since then I have had a meditation any time I
am
around such tools where I visualize a sphere around the business end of the
tool and I never ... that's never ... put my hand in that sphere. I've not
had
another accident in lo these many years.

Farm animals are like that. A kick from the donkey could kill you right
there (think Natasha Richardson), a goat's hoof is far deadlier than its
horns,
and if the 900 lb milk cow suddenly decides to bolt and you are in the way,
it
would be grim. So like the table saw you visualize the range of the animal's
danger and you stay the hell out of it. Period, all the time, world's
without
end, amen. Never get inside that deadly kick zone, always give the cow a
better escape route than through you, and do not get your fool head within
range
of the goat horns.

Now as to caprophiles. On an diverse and integrated homestead the focus you
are able to lavish on any one aspect is limited. It's spring and if we began
to list all the things we are planting and preparing to plant, the list would
be quite long. But let's suppse you had a gardener who was only going to
raise radishes and nothing else. The rest of us know that radishes are very
forgiving and so we sock some seeds in the ground using good general
principles and
get pretty good results. But the Radophile is unfulfilled and unsatisfied
with just socking some seeds in the ground so the look into the type of soil,
and the variety of radish you'd grow at what lattitude, and whether your soil
had traces of boron, platinum, and kryptonite. They'd obsess over the time
of
say to pick the radish and exactly how far up the stem to remove the leaves
.... all things for the sake of actually getting the work of a functioning
farmstead done ... we tend to ignore. Moreover, the dedicated Radophile,
having
exhausted the list of things that might make some small inperceptable
difference in radish growing, will start hallucinating things. Radishes grow
better
if you sow them wearing orange clothing and if you store the seeds in square
rather than round bottles.

Caprophiles are like this. Goats are very close to wild animals, much more
so than cows or chickens or horses or sheep. They are savvy beyond knowing
at
how to take care of themselves given a diverse environment and the
opportunity. All our goats have their kids out in the woods and just show up
the next
day with them/ Yet the caprophiles I know set up a maternity ward rivals the
local hospital as though if it weren't for them there poking about and
interferring and annyoing the nanny (no, not doe) she'd not be able to
deliver. 95% of
what passes for advanced goat knowledge is either pure hallucination or else
the result interventions needed because of inappropriate conditions in which
to keep goats.

The decision to remove the horns from a goat (or disbud them) is like
removing the claws from a cat. It's a personal decision. But one need not
buy into
the hype of all the terrible dangers that await if it is not done. We
castrate most of the billygoats and I'm sure, given their 'druthers, he
billygoats
aren't in favor of that. It does effectively prevent rut in an animal
intended
for meat. But I view disbudding as an unnecessary mutilation that
accomplishes little.

James




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page