Sometimes being one of the herd isn't such a good deal

We learned some interesting, and kind of hard (well hard on our son) lessons about Goat Herd Behavior in the last month or so.
In case you don't know every herd of goats has a a "Herd Queen". She is usually the oldest most experienced Doe, and tends to lead the herd around. The Queen also expects to be greeted first when you walk out to the barn, and when we start to milk she will have to be the first on the milk sanction.
Although we knew there would be a Queen in our herd we watched for a few weeks to determine who it was.
The obvious Choice was Hopper since she is the biggest. But Hopper is very unassuming and not particularly dominate.
Little One, on the other hand has been the biggest bully in the herd. She is constantly butting one of the girls. She is the same age as Hopper, but has always been smaller.
We monitored this behavior for awhile, and finally came to a conclusion. Although Little One is the most aggressive, whenever she started to bother Hopper, she would be put back in her place so to speak.
Hopper was indeed the Queen.
And we've been treating her as such.

The only problem is Little One still doesn't like this. She's a little social climber that one, and would gladly take over the queen title at any moment.
We watched this behavior and jockeying for position with a detached amusement. Until nearly a month ago.
We were spending quite a bit of time outside working on the barns, and Nathan (our oldest son) was often with us. He spent most of his time playing, frolicking, and leading the goats around.
One afternoon, I was standing only a few feet from the entrance to the barn door and he had disappeared inside with a few of the goats. I heard the sound of hooves moving at a faster rate and then Nathan yelped.

Little One had butted him, right in the stomach.

Since I hadn't seen the events the moments prior to this, I couldn't be totally sure if it had been provoked or not.

I separated the two of them and went on with my day.

Of course it didn't stop there.

Every time Nathan came anywhere near Little One she would lower her head and charge at him. She would even seek him out around and behind other goats.

Of course my Husband and I were there, and would immediately grab a hold of the goat and separate them so no one got hurt. But we knew this behavior couldn't continue.

So I hit the Internet.

My first search was "Goat Discipline" hoping to find a way to curb her aggressive behavior through some form of discipline.

Just so you know its not a very valid search in terms of goats it turned up many parenting discipline blogs because people refer to their kids as like a bunch of goat kids climbing on things.

So I looked up "butting" "butting problems with goats" and a few others until I ended up on many forms talking about how to handle a goat that butts.

The advice ranged
Many people suggested that once a goat starts to Butt you may have no choice but to sell it (although we were aware that may be the end result we were hoping to correct the problem)
Another suggested a much more aggressive approach- smack a goat across the horns with a piece of wood.
(We weren't about to teach our 4 year old to hit the goats with a stick)
The last piece of advice we found suggested that with Bucks you may have to pin them to the ground and rub their nose in the dirt to show that they cannot dominate you.
We also reread a lot of information on overall herd behavior.

That's when it all clicked into place.

We had been allowing Nathan to run with the herd. In some ways I think he was being adopted into the herd. This is where the herd hierarchy was coming into play, if you add a new goat into a herd the doe's will butt and carry on with the new addition trying to maintain or raise their status in the herd. Since Little One was trying to raise her status, she was butting Nathan trying to make sure she was above him in the social standings.

We decided that although we could keep dragging them apart the best way to solve the problem permanently was going to have to be teaching him to show her that he was in fact higher ranking than her.

Chris went into the pen with him and waited for Little One to make her move.
When she came over with her head lowered. Chris taught Nathan to grab her by the horns before she could hit him, and turn her by the horns forcing her head to turn back towards her body.

It took several attempts for Nathan to perfect the move, and for Little One to realize that she wasn't going to win.
Overall Nathan still has to be on the lookout for her when he enters the goat area. She will still try a sneak attack once and awhile if she thinks he's not watching. But this seems to have solved the problem.

It was hard to do, because you want to make sure your kid isn't going to get hurt. I also didn't want to have to sell her. We realized that we couldn't keep separating the two of them, if the problem was going to be solved, we were going to have to let him do it himself. Since she was treating him like a goat our intervention was not going to ease the situation. He needed to put her in her place and show her that she could not be above him in the herd. It was something we couldn't teach her for him. So we had to teach him how to stop her, and show her that he was in charge. I know it wouldn't have worked if he was younger or weaker, but it's worked for now.

Information overload

Thursday was another wet and rainy day around here. And I couldn't take it! Feeling trapped in the house, we somehow ended up on a little road trip. Traveling to the next biggest town?City? about an hour East of here.


Oddly we came across a coffee shop that had a basement full of used books. Mostly for a dollar or 2 each.


these were my wicked scores from the shop...

The New Complete Great Pyrenees by Paul Strang

And Raising Sheep the modern way by Paula Simmons.

I've been devouring both these books in small doses ever since I got them (funny with 2 small kids I can no longer sit down and read a book cover to cover).

I find the Complete Pyrenees book so interesting because although we own 2 dogs that are at least 1/2 Pyrenees each, I've only gotten my information about the breed from websites or blogs...and I never have time to read any website in it's entirety. So to have an actual book that I can flip through and find answers in is awesome. Plus the index to look up specific questions...it's one of the things I miss most about not always having books as your resources any more. Although the Internet is usually more convenient and faster for researching ( and way less heavy than boxes and boxes of books when you've moved as many times as we have) Some times it's nice to be able to scan an index and start from there. Not having to know what your looking for specifically.

The sheep book is a wealth of knowledge that I want to absorb like a sponge. I finally got my answer to how many sheep per acre!!!

The answer is 4 sheep per acre if you have good pasture and 1-2 per acre if you have poor pasture. In case you were wondering.

My mind has been running in overdrive as I read about fencing, and the importance of buying sheep that are prone to twins lambing.

I have been concerned about the state of our fences for quite awhile and wondering how much repair and or extra wire would have to be added before we could introduce any animal especially sheep to the pastures. and I read this...

"Sheep quickly learn to jump sagging fences...If you wait until they have the jumping habit, they may still do it after the fence is repaired. One jumper can set a bad example and should be sold, or slowed down by temporary "clogging" until retrained."

"Clogging" is strapping a piece of wood around the sheeps front ankle that gets in the way to prevent it from jumping- who knew? not me, I've never heard of it. (of course tonight I'll probably have some strange dream of sheep jumping over the moon in actual clogs -like the big dutch wooden shoe kind)

Answers to dumb questions

remember me complaining about dirty chicks?

apparently you can wash chicks. as long as you don't allow them to get their heads under water. Do it with warm water. and dry them well before they can get a chill.

At least according to people on the the backyard chicken form

Backyard chickens is quite the information packed site about ummm...everything chickens. funny how that works.

I found it through the site hencam.com, which was talked about on the scratch and peck blogspot
Lauren is such a cute illustrator, and writes with such a passion about her little flock you can feel the love she has for them. Totally worth checking out just because it's so darn cute.