Much 'livestock' is just raised for meat, and gets an ear-tag number for monitoring. Lifespan a year or two maximum. Dairy goats are different - they are not 'consumed', and they are docile, and unlike a herd of cattle, are typically hand-milked and often just kept as pets or irregular-terrain grazers long after their lactating career has ended.
Unfortunately, the combination of moving one electric fence charger to replace a defective one, not telling my wife I did that, and her putting the goats in a place for the day they usually only go when our dogs are put in their fenced-in area, is probably why when my daughter went out this evening to herd them back to their normal pasture, she found them mauled, with holes exposing internals, and ears/tails chewed off down to bone. They were huddled in a hyperventilating pile of stress. These are animals my wife spent 10-12 years taking their ancestors to 4H shows and breeding with other quality animals so we had show-winners, and just generally beautiful and healthy animals.
We no longer milk them due to our schedules and her arthritis, but they are wonderful pets and ways to keep swampy or hilly areas clear of weeds and brush. She commented a few weeks ago that they were one of the few 'beautiful' things in life that hadn't been stripped away from us by our own personal financial downturns and the whole country's downhill slide.
So, tonight I had to go out and shoot two of the three in the head. We will see if we can salvage the third, but they are so social and obsessive-compulsive that any change in routine (death of both the other lifelong companions) often harms them as much as physical injuries do.
Thankfully our ever-so-gracious masters still allow some of us to possess suppressors, so there wasn't any 'executioner noise' back at the house for wife and daughter to hear.
Anyway, I'm praying that the remaining goat recovers from the injuries, and that we can afford the vet bills (I'll do what I can myself). Mostly, I guess, really praying that my wife and daughter aren't set back too much by all this. The visuals of seeing loved pets mauled to the point of needing euthanized are not ones most people do well with.
Still, I know that worldwide, dozens of people probably came home today to find not their pets, but their own families, in similar states, either from war, terrorism, or just some neighborhood pervert. Pray most of all for them, but maybe toss in a word or two about the goat...
> Click on for Video of Baby Goat
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