Since I got interested in goats I have come across many myths and prejudices about them; they smell, the eat anything, goats milk tastes peculiar, goats butt people and finally goats cause brucellosis. None of this is true.
Female goats don't smell at all if kept in clean quarters with good ventilation. Male goats certainly do smell awful during the rut, from September to March they reek. So I'm avoiding keeping a male.
Cows milk, sheep's milk and goats milk are all easily contaminated and take on extraneous tastes. Milk taken from a healthy goat, milked in hygienic conditions into a clean container and then quickly cooled is indistinguishable from cows milk.
Goats are fastidious; they won't eat food that's fallen on the ground and they don't eat laundry as in comic books. Today we carried out a totally unscientific test of the laundry eating myth. When taken to the washing line they only showed a passing interest in my rugby shirt and then carried on devastating the brambles.
Again comic books and some older male goats are responsible for the butting myth. Like most of us, with advancing age they can become grumpy and pretty tough customers. Arguments are settled by head butting as in cattle, sheep and Glasgow.
When British servicemen traveled to all parts of the Empire via Malta many of them contracted, "Malta Fever" from the milk of the island's goats which was infected with Brucella melitensis. The last time the disease was diagnosed in Britain was before the Second World War.
Female goats don't smell at all if kept in clean quarters with good ventilation. Male goats certainly do smell awful during the rut, from September to March they reek. So I'm avoiding keeping a male.
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| Only a passing interest in the washing line |
Cows milk, sheep's milk and goats milk are all easily contaminated and take on extraneous tastes. Milk taken from a healthy goat, milked in hygienic conditions into a clean container and then quickly cooled is indistinguishable from cows milk.
Goats are fastidious; they won't eat food that's fallen on the ground and they don't eat laundry as in comic books. Today we carried out a totally unscientific test of the laundry eating myth. When taken to the washing line they only showed a passing interest in my rugby shirt and then carried on devastating the brambles.
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| Brambles....real goat food |
Again comic books and some older male goats are responsible for the butting myth. Like most of us, with advancing age they can become grumpy and pretty tough customers. Arguments are settled by head butting as in cattle, sheep and Glasgow.
When British servicemen traveled to all parts of the Empire via Malta many of them contracted, "Malta Fever" from the milk of the island's goats which was infected with Brucella melitensis. The last time the disease was diagnosed in Britain was before the Second World War.
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