Buy a Goat

While traveling in Nepal, along mountain slopes in the foothills of the Annapurna Massif, I began to notice the perfectly manicured yards. At first I thought that the locals simply had a deep inclination toward orderliness, because they achieved such tidiness despite a complete absence of electricity or fuel oil. Only later did I realize that their well-mown lawns were thanks to their herds of goats.

When I returned to Russia, I was irritated by the scruffy appearance of my own yard. Dandelions, hogweed, nettle, thistle and burdock are very difficult to uproot by hand, despite the fact that I have all of the necessary implements to do so. These tools merely left my hands covered with bloody blisters, while the lawn still looked as depressing as before. Desperate, I remembered the goats and decided to try and raise one myself, in order to see whether it might work like a lawn mower.

Before I made my purchase, I did a bit of research and found that the use of animals to keep one’s grass cut is rather widespread: herds are rented out together with mobile fencing, and both sheep and goats are able to trim (and fertilize) a rather large patch of ground. It is a straightforward and environmentally sustainable solution. And strange that the practice is little used here.

I decided to start with a baby goat, a kid, which I purchased in the neighboring village and carted home by taxi, in a plastic box. The kid was dirty, and it had a spiked collar that clearly had once adorned the neck of a human.

To the touch, goats are rather similar to dogs, but if you are used to petting dogs it will feel a bit strange when your hands skitter across a goat’s horns and hooves. Also, goats have rectangular pupils, like octopi, which is something you never get used to.

After I washed the kid, I leashed him – as the internet advised – to a specially made peg. Yet it quickly became clear that this was not the best decision. The baby goat became agitated, wailed heartbreakingly, and ran in circles until he became tangled up in the leash. So I gave him his freedom.

Within a week, the lawn began to look considerably better. The kid (named Soplivchik, “Snotty”) went after the weeds, avoiding only the nettles, and ate all the grass down to a uniform level.

The downside was his strange behavior: he butted his head against the fence for hours, chased the dog and took over his doghouse, drank his own urine, and ate all my currant bushes.

Still, by summer’s end, I was able to say that, on the whole, things had gone well. Yet by fall the kid had turned into a goat and started butting so fiercely that I was afraid to leave the house without a broomstick. You couldn’t turn your back on him, he was impossible to negotiate with, and no goat-raising advice from the internet was of any help.

So I decided that a goat was a seasonal sport. And I sold him off.

The following spring I bought a new baby goat, this time an extremely small one. He was an unbelievably sweet creature, would sleep on my lap, curled up in a ball, and became friends with the dogs and the cat, constantly trying to sleep with one of them in a warm embrace. He had a thick coat, the colors of a chipmunk, and a very cheerful disposition.

Yet within a few weeks he fell ill. Veterinary clinics here refuse to see goats, because they have a very unique anatomy, unlike other pets, and so I had to treat him myself.

I phoned around to all the other goat owners nearby, but their advice mainly consisted of the magical properties of soda and urine therapy. I managed to dig up the contact information of both a zoologist and a state veterinary clinic, but they too were unable to help.

After several days rooting around the internet, it seemed likely that the problem was White Muscle Disease (brought on by a deficiency of selenium and/or vitamin E), which strikes a huge proportion of agricultural livestock; on occasion, up to 80 percent of a herd can die off. We started giving the kid the necessary shots and medicine, but we were too late.

After the kid’s death, I continued reading about various problems with goats and discovered that they are actually rather vulnerable. They often die in ridiculous and accidental ways. All they have to do is be unlucky enough to eat a bit of sedge or sawdust, and their complex digestive system can fail. They also often faint during feeding, because they get so anxious in pursuit of their food.

Despite the fact that I was raising my goat as a tool, I bonded with it like a pet and grieved over its death.

The next time, I think I may just rent a goat, and I think that a strong, adult ram may be a reliable option.

Certainly parting with it will not be so painful. 

Three Goat Myths

MYTH

Goats are smelly, from which we have the expression, козёл вонючий (smelly as a goat).

TRUTH

Goats have a pleasant smell, of goat’s milk or cheese. Even after washing mine with a dog shampoo, this smell persisted. I had to resist rubbing my bedsheets all over him.

MYTH

There is no point having a male goat, thus the saying, как с козла молока (like milk from a goat).

TRUTH

A male goat has many uses, not least of which is cutting the grass. Keeping the first goat cost me R3000 (plus R400 for the Uber ride to pick him up) for the entire summer, which is what it would cost to hire someone to mow our lawn just once.

MYTH

Keeping a goat is nothing but trouble, thus our saying, козла сколько ни корми, а он все в огород лезет (no matter how much you feed a goat, he’ll climb into the garden).

TRUTH

All you need to feed a goat is fresh grass and a salt lick (or else it will drink its own urine), and, if you want to pamper him, a bit of compound feed in the evenings.