A crazed baby goat

August 4, 2012 • 12:33 pm

Have a gander at this insane little female goat. I thought that the frenzied animal below had been smoking something, but apparently this is regular kid behavior. When I sent the video to regular poster Linda Grilli Calhoun, who raises and breeds goats for a living, I noted the hyperactivity of the little one and asked, “Is this normal?”

She answered:

Honestly?  That looks pretty normal to me.  The ones that are being placid just have different personalities. I’ve had plenty of kids that bounce off the walls like that doeling bounced off her herdmates.  The ones that are quieter are more rare, at least in my herd.

The info given at YouTube is this:

Buttermilk Sky is a five-week-old Nigerian dwarf goat kid at Took a Leap Farm in Houlton, Maine. I think we’ll have our hands full with this little one! Learn more about our farm and goats at http://www.tookaleapfarm.com.

31 thoughts on “A crazed baby goat”

  3. That breed is so tiny. Is the poor black goat getting tormented actually the mom? If not, I hope that one grows up to kick Buttermilk’s behind!

    1. The black doe may be that kid’s dam. In any case, she’s a mature doe; she has a developed udder.

      Nigerians have a height limit in does of 22.5 inches, and in bucks of 23.5. If they exceed that height, they are disqualified from shows, appraisal, and milk tests.

      They are currently the chic breed in the goat world, but frankly, they’re a pain. Most Nigerian breeders don’t use the animals for anything but pets, although there are a couple of commercial dairies that milk them. Their butterfat and protein are really high, so the milk makes great cheese.

      They do have a big advantage over Pygmies, though. Pygmies in Africa are a meat breed, but in this country they, too, are mainly pets. The Pygmy breed standard causes a lot of kidding problems, but the Nigerian breed standard is the same as the standard dairy breeds, so the structural soundness is there.

      L

  4. I wish people would take note of this, by the way. Despite the hilarity, notice how the camera person stifles the laughs and keeps the camera steady? People, this is the way to do a Youtube video! I’ve seen otherwise stunning footage of hornbills in the rainforest etc, totally ruined by muttering and shaky camera action.

        1. If the Good Lord had intended us to use tripods, he would never have given us the elbow!
          Well, that’s how I stabilize my camera when trying to take video, use a 500mm lens, etc. Elbow ; nearby tree/ lamp post/ whatever ; apply.
          Of course, if I’m planning to do such things, I’ll take and attach a tripod. But not for normal out-and-about.

  5. Goats are fairly intelligent and playfun animals. Sheep are generally dumb and placid. One exception. When we would put out cottonseed cake spread around in a circle for the adult ewes in the pasture, All the lambs would get together in a bunch and run in circles around the feeding ewes. 600 lambs doing that is pretty impressive, and fun to watch.

  6. I met one of these in Bisbee a few weeks ago. It was walking on a leash like a little dog. A very playful and affectionate creature.

  9. Personality in animals, what a scary concept for a lot of professionals. Zoologists for the most part are already over the old conductism with its universal laws which treated animals as if they were protons. But a lot of psychologists I know are stuck with the cartesian idea of animals as machines that just react automatically to external stimuli.

    1. I used to be a shrink. During my training, I got into it more than once over this. Interestingly, the people who held this view had no experience with animals at all. But, they were utterly convinced that my opinion had nothing to do with observation and everything to do with projection. L

      1. That notion has never made much sense to me, either.

        We are so clearly part of a continuum with other life on earth. We share our mitochondria with redwoods and our blood types with chimpanzees. Why it should be that there are no analogies to human cognition in other animals with similar brains has never been even hypothetically explained to me.

        Well, excepting the whole religious angle of souls infesting our minds, of course….

        b&

        1. I think it has something to do with the principle that the less you know about something, the more pigheaded your opinions. L

        2. I think this is one of those situations where the selection of the null hypothesis is really important – we just can’t get any evidence about the internal experience of animals. And for some, it seems “skeptical” for that hypothesis to be “animals should be considered as different as possible from humans in all aspects until we have evidence for for a similarity.” For me it is “Humans are animals, and the only differences we should accept in are those we have evidence for.” Of course, idiots take this to mean I will ignore actual evidence or convincing supported theory for differences, but whatever.

          1. Whenever I hear someone say “we shouldn’t anthropomorphise” I always think “why”

          2. Communicating is NOT anthropomorphizing.

            Even though the vocabulary is limited to baa and maa, and the maternal nicker, the tones are different. I’m hungry, I’m hurting, I’m happy, I’m just being a demanding pain-in-the-ass all have distinctly different tones.

            Except, as the rut begins, I am reminded once again that I’m horny as hell and I’m dying have the same tone. L

  10. When I was on a small private island in the Fiji chain (back in the ’80s), I fell madly in love with a 2-week old baby goat. And that’s exactly the way he?she? behaved. Except the Fiji baby had one more gynmastic move: she would jump straight up in the air, off all her four legs. Wild. And holding a baby goat is precisely like holding a unicorn.

  11. I spent this past summer driving around to various states and interacting with many goat breeders (and therefore goats) for a study. There are two kids that still stick out in my mind — jumping off walls, siblings, mom, etc. One was a Nigerian Dwarf. His buddy, and partner in crime, was a Lamancha 🙂

  13. OT but I don’t know where else to post this.
    But Jerry right now I’m in Iran and your blog is blocked there. I’m using a VPN so my IP should look like a Danish one and I’m guessing most Iranian users are using similar tools as well.

    Of course the reason for the blockage is that it’s hosted under “wordpress.com” which in the eyes of the Iranian officials is a foreign blog hive that spreads “corruption” and does the bidding of “zionist” and “imperialists” and aims to destroy the Iranian revolution or Islam or something like that (by the way, Terry Tao’s blog is also blocked for the same reason).

  15. Goats do love to climb too. I live in a rural neighborhood where I used to keep my old ’91 Lincoln covered in an open shed. I couldn’t figure out where the the odd tears in the fabric of the car cover were coming from ’til I saw my neighbors black billy posing as the new hood ornament.

  16. When I first started college, I was boarding with a family (it was way cheaper than the college dorms!) that had, in addition to the horses and full size goats, a pack of 9 dogs…until you got close. Then one would realize that it was 8 dogs and mini-goat of some kind. She was very cute, would run with the pack every where, and would headbutt your leg to get pet…something my dog learned from her. 🙂

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