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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >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