Although never underestimate the destructive power of a goat! Pretty sure we could have ended WWII much sooner if we had simply taken a B-29 full of military goats and parachuted them over Japan. That entire country would have been a bare dirt patch (covered in enormous amount of poop) within days… Wood and Rice-paper construction sounds like a crunchy snack!
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I know what you’re thinking but Sgt. Rocky did 2 tours up in the Kush (he’s got the thousand yard stare down pat!):
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Note many of you probably are thinking you know about goats. But a fact you probably didn’t know is their natural predator in the wild is not in fact wolves or other carnivores, it is in fact the hat. They hate nothing more than a hat. And the first thing they do when you put a hat on them is they run to their buddy and ask their buddy to pulverize it off their head… (note the horses find their antics endlessly amusing and they do actually make what looks like a laughing expression with their lower lip quivering.
Note if you try this the army uniform fabric has zero stretch and human shirts and goat arms do not bend in the same way so it is really hard to get the shirt on/off them.
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Our boys are wethered also. We had 13 at one time, as two of our females both delivered quads, but lost one older female, one from a quad, and the other mom and her full quad, all within a couple months of each other. Came to find out it was from wild cherry trees in their fields causing cyanide poisoning. All the cherry trees on the property have been removed. We didn’t know about the cherry tree hazard until it was too late. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Both boys are from the one mom, but two years apart.
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That’s sad. We almost lost the entire herd from someone at a party throwing an azalea branch in and all of them (well not oreo since she’s a jerk and never does what anyone else does so luckily didn’t eat a lot of it) but the other 4 were close to death from cardiac glycoside toxicity when my wife got called out to the barn in the middle of the night as they were projectile vomiting and looking near death (for medical people their admission lactates were over 10!). We hauled them out to Tufts Large Animal in the middle of the night. The attending called us assuming we were going to euthanize (since that’s normally what one does with critically ill goats) and we explained they were our family pets (and I am faculty there, and my wife is an alum and runs the annual campaign too) so they spent a week in the ICU (caramel was in status epilepticus and Buttescotch was in 3rd degree heart block). That was a doozy of a bill. Oreo at least was a good big sister (not actually a sister but born same day) and would stay curled up with Caramel to keep her company. Although at least during all that we found out that poor caramel was so small because she had mycoplasma pneumonia (walking pneumonia) and all 4 had Barber Pole Worm infection so under the WHO eradication protocol we treated them for it. Damn that was a large bill! Oreo of course kept escaping from their stall and ran around the hospital (the staff couldn’t figure out how she was opening the insanely heavy steel door and they’d find her in supply closets, etc, just wandering into various offices because she could…
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Goats are extremely entertaining… but equally the dumbest animals on the planet. 
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@henryhbk - One of the babies who died was also suffering from barber pole worm, but the poisoning took them all very quickly. They’d be fine one day, gone the next. A couple of them died in my arms. I’ve never cried so hard, except for when we had to have our 17 yoa Persion cat put down because of cancer. We had planned on raising the goats to breed and sell, but we get too attached to them and couldn’t sell them. And because of the heartache of losing so many, we haven’t bred any of the girls since, even though we’ve removed what killed them.
@kanati - I think sheep are much dumber than goats. They’ll drown in the rain and can’t find their food without help. Our goats head for the barn at the slightest sprinkle and no exactly where their food is, and even when my husband is heading to the barn to give them their evening treats (it was a way to get them into the barn, but now they’ve got us trained 
as opposed to when he’s just going out there to work).
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I know it was meant as a joke, but let’s not have subject lines like this again. My heart sank 
Maybe it was partially due to the fact that I still remember one of my favorite meals from when I was a teenager, bbq goat.
Edited to add: I love your goat stories and know too many that do raise animals for food. Nothing against that, I just don’t want to hear about your precious goats for dinner.
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What great goat stories! I can just visualize the antics. My husband raises cattle and there’s many winters we ‘house’ some of the calves who are almost frozen…they warm up usually during the middle of the night and are ready to get out. Many think my husband is their new mama. One from last year still does. He has to get her sold because when they get really big they become dangerous trying to get his attention!
Thanks for sharing!
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Your goats always brighten our day. 
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