The Fate of Old Billy Goat Gruff

Well.....I must admit that I was more than a bit ignorant when first traversing this whole goat road. We have now successfully lost 3 goats...as in, managed to kill off...... and now can add this new side of goat life to it. I had NO clue just exactly how entirely nasty billy goats are. Oh my gosh. Disgusting comes nowhere near even beginning to do them justice. They take nastiness and sheer disgusting repulsion to a whole new level. I must start this entry with just how exactly appallingly atrocious this whole billy thing was. Ok....let's begin with the fact that he would freakin pee all over his face, he mounted anything and everything including his own MALE baby in his grand attempts to reproduce, he sucked on himself while drinking his own urinary output...and I spare no details here only to give you a clear picture before telling you this whole story. So, on to how his supposed to be white goat hair was yellow from acts such as the previous statement described and how he did all other kinds of shocking things to the baby he helped produce. Ugh!!!!!

We knew that big billy goats were not so kind but up to this point had had only small run ins with him. He charged and reared at anything that dare provoke his moody temperamental state of being. He butted and horned when demanding impatiently for his share of oats and then proceeded to run off and eat all of the other goats' share. Poor nanny goat was growing more and more lean as big billy binged and fattened up by the day......or rather, by the meal, as they are fed twice a day. Everybody, except farmer Brad, of course, was scared to death of this insane and disgustingly gross horned animal. You've never seen kids scatter, scream and run so fast in all of your life as something so obnoxious approached. And to see his ornery self rare up on 2 hooved feet to near eye level with you........or for the children, tower over them in his attempt to run the roost.....was quite the intimidating experience.

So, we had been having issues with the baby getting repeatedly stuck time and time again in the fences by his swift growing horns. It had become a daily routine to go hunt him down, knowing that when he failed to appear he was more then likely stuck somewhere within the goat domain. On this one fateful, moonless night Grayson had gone to put Athena up and heard the now common cries coming from a stuck baby goat. He set off in the dark to do the humane thing and unstick him yet again...for the 15th time that day. And when I say stuck....I mean really stuck, as in completely unable to unstick himself. His horns bled on more than one occasion and one day we went out and swore he was very dead. It turned out he was just dehydrated and only near death but not all the way there yet. So, this is not a case of needlessly doing something he could or would eventually do himself. Once he's stuck, he's there for good unless aided by human hands to uncurl his horns from the fence.

On this one occasion he was so stuck that it was impossible for Grayson to do the job from the outside of the fence so he traipsed into the pasture carefully but unafraid. Evye happened to have gotten in on the action and was out there with him. Of course, Brad was on shift. I was made aware of the situation only after it appeared to be too late. Evye came in screaming through her tears that I needed to go save Grayson and that the billy was attacking him. She said Grayson was pinned against the fence and could not escape and that she couldn't deter the goat to let Grayson get away. I had to throw on shoes and by the time that was done I was met by Grayson 1/2 way to the backdoor. He had obviously gotten away but soon his anger turned into torrents of tears as he spilled the story and what had happened. The goat had indeed gotten ahold of him, pinned him against the fence and continued to ram him in the abdomen. I wasn't sure if anything else had been harmed in the deal since the goat is right at groin level with him when he goes into butting mode with head down and charging at you. I called Brad to talk to Grayson and see if Grayson was willing to share any details he might've left out with me. By the end of it we were sure the goat had only gotten him in the stomach and he would be sore but ok.

Brad and I have both known for quite some time that Billy....or Texas to the children.....had to go. His aggressiveness alarmed us all and he was no animal to have on hand with small children always present. I surmised that this incident with Grayson was enough to get him sent to the auction the very next day. Auction is every Tues and this happened to be a handy Mon night affair. But never in my life did I ever imagine what exactly Brad and his male self had in mind. Once the children were in bed he informed me that the goat was on death row and he had every intention of shooting him come morning. Ummm....honey.....that wasn't really what I had in mind. Nonetheless, Brad had his mind made up....and when he gets that upset about something I know, more now than ever, that the decision's made and there is no convincing him otherwise. So, I pondered this thought late into the night and I had visions of trying to get big mean Billy up into the bed of the truck...seeing as how we still do not own a trailer for any kind of our livestock as of yet. Better the bed of a truck with a dog kennel then a payment attached to a trailer.

Despite my late night ponderings I could come up with no possible solution to save this nasty, disgustingly gross, mean goat's life. Why I even bothered I'm not quite sure...other than the fact that I still see every animal as a pet. The children rose bright and early, as their usual 7:30 internal body clock alarm went off...so very far removed from my own.....and waited Brad's arrival home. His routine 8 am arrival sent everyone into fits of excitement with Grayson and Evye the only ones aware of the fate that awaited big billy. Having talked the night before, after realizing there was no talking Brad out of this, we had decided that it was probably good for the little ones to view the shooting. Since I was never in a lifetime exposed to things of this nature when growing up and Grayson and Evye have the hardest time dealing with stuff like this since they were never exposed to farm life until their older years we want to show the little ones early on. This is reality, this is farm life, this is what happens and goats are food on the table...not pets. Oh yes....did I mention that he was headed to the processing plant after his death to later be displayed on our table???? The children gagged at this one and no one wanted to see him in our freezer....not to mention on the dining room table. It definitely had the ability to spur a loss of appetite. We still have to grow into the whole farm thing on that note. With all of the little guys playing and riding bikes outside in the early morning it didn't take much for Brad to gather them for the big event. I heard the unmistakable pops of the gun and cringed knowing what was taking place. I have never dealt well with animal death....especially considering this was the sweet baby twin to Flop who was viciously attacked by Tigger. This was now just the very grown up twin that had happened to turn meaner than mean when testosterone altered his once loving little demeanor. In my hope of seeing this in a good light I had envisioned 1 shot to the head and it being over. Course that is never how real life goes and the one shot that was aimed at his head freakin bounced off...like, literally bounced off of his skull and didn't even make a dent. It gave a new meaning to being hard headed. Wonder if that's where the analogy originated. So, with Evye in tears by my side in the kitchen and Grayson now running down the sidewalk apparently unable to take what was happening, the morning turned a little sour. As I had hoped, the little boys ran in shouting victoriously in sheer excitement that "Daddy shot the mean old billy goat!!!!!" To them it was the heroic deed of the year worthy of the most prestigious award out there. Daddy definitely earned a few brownie points that day and it was all Garrison, Grant and Garrett talked excitedly about for days. With Garrison having been on the horned end of this goat on several different occasions he is now terrified of goats. He screams and begins to cry hysterically if you even act like you might put him down when in the pasture with them. And it is quite the feat to even get him to go in with you while being held. Usually he adamantly stays on the outside of the pasture. So, to him this was the greatest thing in the world that could've happened to this awful creature of a goat.

I have to say I was a little more of the mindset to coax big billy into the bed of the truck and haul him off to the auction. But with the nanny in heat and his testosterone flaring he was as obstinate and mean as they come. Wrestling with him would not have been a pretty sight and he was so big and so fat by this point he had the ability to take Brad to the ground if he dared get it in his head. Being in the bed of the truck with him and trying to get him into a kennel was not optimal by any stretch of the imagination. So it was that he did finally succumb to his death despite my opposition even when knowing this was about the only way to get rid of him and knowing it was not even safe to keep him another day. It was like risking life and limb to tolerate him and I began to realize that I would silently pray for the children's safety everytime they headed out to the pasture to feed. That was sheer insanity. Why in the world are we risking our children for the sake of a goat gone mad. Why would we keep him even another hour??? We both knew we could not afford to wait for an ad to be published and a buyer to come out and get him at the expense of possibly one of our children's lives. And at this point he had become a very real threat to their safety....albeit a very comical, funny kind of threat. Brad and I both knew in the seriousness of it that had he ducked his head, horned and then raised up, as he so very often does, that he could've done some very real damage to Grayson.

So it is that we are yet one less goat again. Garrison, Grant and Garrett are still proclaiming Brad's heroic, lifesaving measures to anybody that will dare listen to the goat story. John Wayne, our baby soon to turn billy, will make his way to the auction in a few short weeks, as we have learned the sacred lesson of not owning a male goat. We are now of the mindset to add a few more Boers to the herd to keep the nanny company and to tread into the dairy goat world. Neither of us are big fans of Boer's so we have decided to take on possibly an Alpine and some other dairy nanny. Though we have no intention of milking them just yet since we still have yet to prepare the pastures with good nutritious food and none of us want to be drinking the ragweed they have eaten, we plan on just learning the ropes. They can grow and kid and nurse their babies as we learn how to care for them. By the time we are ready to milk they will have grown from being kids themselves to milking age, and hopefully have successfully put forth a milk supply, and we will have learned how to care for them without killing off our own milk supply by our ignorance.

So....no more billy goats for the young growing family. We move on a little ahead of schedule to the dairy breeds to see what we can learn where they are concerned and are happy to stick with the little nannies.