Benefits of having a horse, and a goat

If the gas price keeps going up, more people will ride horses to work!

If you are tired of working on your lawn, get a goat! From what I have heard, goats only eat the top section of the grass! Perfect for keeping the lawn short!

I used to keep goats. Not only do they eat grass but they will strip the bark from some trees. It has been years ago so I don't remember which kind of trees. Don't let anyone tell you goats eat tin cans. They do not, but they will eat the label off the steel cans. Besides being good at keeping grass down, they are a lot of fun. I enjoyed them a lot.

Goats are cute from what I have seen lol. They are easy to take care of even if you live in a desert area, because they are not very demanding. I have never heard of the saying that they eat tin cans, and I would not believe it for a moment that there is one animal on this planet can digest metal. :p

Good for you for having sense enough to know they do not eat metal. I don't know how many times I have heard people say they eat cans. Head shake! But they are fun. The kids are terribly funny to watch. Also, goats do like attention, affection too. One story for you.
We had made a big bowl of spaghetti for dinner and had it on the kitchen table. For some reason or another everyone was in another room. No one was in the kitchen. I heard our back door slam and went to see who came in (we had family in a couple of houses across the street). Well there stood one of our biggest does at the table eating our dinner. I do not remember what we had for dinner that evening but it was NOT spaghetti!

Goats don't eat cans, but will nibble on just about anything. I had several pygmy goats that didn't believe in fencing and would get out every chance they got. They did chew the licenese plate cover and plate off my husbands truck! But no, they don't chow down cans like the old movies used to show. (Goats actually have very sensitive stomachs!)
They stripped the bark off several apple trees, cherry trees and a pear tree which didn't thrill my husband, so for their sake and our sanity, we gave them to a neighbor that has a petting zoo.

Just which old movie was it?
It's actually my first time hearing "goats eat tin cans".

Ok, this is going back probably way before your time, but the first time I seen a show with a goat chewing on a can was an old "Ma and Pa Kettle" movie. They were made(I think) back in the 40's and showed the life of what would be concidered rednecks nowadays..goats in the house, 12 kids running barefoot and an old outhouse. ( the whole show was based on myths and stereotypes)
And it is a myth that goats eat tin cans..they actually have very touchy stomachs and can die rather quickly if they do eat something like that. My goats were "nibblers" where they chewed up stuff, but didn't actually eat it.

You have made me miss having goats. It is a shame but they will damage trees. I'm not sure there has been a fence made that will hold a goat that wants to roam. Story: We had a kid born that from the get go thought she was a lap dog. Now, holding a very young kid on your lap is not a problem but in a few months time they are too big for the lap. This kid was very affectionate and loved attention and curling up in my lap. By the time she was four months old she had to stay down. When she was about six months old I was sitting outside in a lawn chair. The goat was maybe 25 - 30 feet away when I noticed she was looking at me...cocking her head one side to the other. Suddenly she came running toward me and about 12 feet away I realized her intention. But goats are fast. At about six feet she made a flying leap to get in my lap. When she landed she hit my chest, the chair went over backward, she flew over my head, came up with a very indignant bleat and never tried that again.

bw, did you refer the goat as "kid"?
Awesome attention whore you got there.

So what has become of that goat?

Ram8349, Baby goats are called kids. The males are bucks, the females are does and the young are kids. We had those goats many, many years ago. When we moved into town we sold them all.

I hope they were not sold as food.

They were dairy goats. The guy that bought them wanted new blood in his herd. But the male kids were sold off at times as pets, at times as food. Goat meat is tasty. We used to make home made ice cream from the goats milk, we even churned our own butter from the little cream that rises. Goats milk is rich but does not separate as much as cows milk will. Therefore it takes a lot of milk to get enough cream to churn butter.

Did you say you used to live on a farm?
You seem to know a lot of these things.

We lived in the country, not an actual farm but we did at times raise goats & chickens. I was a country kid!

(03-29-2012, 05:54 AM)bw Wrote: We lived in the country, not an actual farm but we did at times raise goats & chickens. I was a country kid!

A lot more options to have pets when you live in the country.

The city I am in right now even have the rule of "one dog per family" limit, although I've seen people walking 2 dogs all the time. I guess the rule isn't enforced very well.

They often are not enforced.

Then they shouldn't even bother with the rules.

I think the tin can myth comes from the amazing variety of things that they will eat. I'm told that goats are the only animals that can (and will) eat poison ivy with no ill effects. I remember as a child a ride on the Ducks (WWII amphibious vehicles) at the Wisconsin Dells. At one point the ride would stop so people cound feed the wild goats that would come looking for handouts. I remember the guide telling us we could give them cigarets or chewing gum ("Don't bother unwraping it for them; the wraper if the best part.") A number of years later, I took the ride again. Going through the woods, the guide explained that the goat ot two we saw in the distance were all that was left of a herd of wild goats that used to live there. There were more, but too many people fed them cigarets.

(04-10-2012, 03:00 PM)Karenskatz Wrote: I think the tin can myth comes from the amazing variety of things that they will eat. I'm told that goats are the only animals that can (and will) eat poison ivy with no ill effects. I remember as a child a ride on the Ducks (WWII amphibious vehicles) at the Wisconsin Dells. At one point the ride would stop so people could feed the wild goats that would come looking for handouts. I remember the guide telling us we could give them cigarets or chewing gum ("Don't bother unwraping it for them; the wraper if the best part.") A number of years later, I took the ride again. Going through the woods, the guide explained that the goat ot two we saw in the distance were all that was left of a herd of wild goats that used to live there. There were more, but too many people fed them cigarets.

So the poor wild goats all died from food poisoning?

Don't know for sure, but we now know that tobacco is bad for people, so...