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ALOHA Everyone! - BlaqueUnicornAdventures - 07-03-2014
Aloha everyone,
I am somewhat "new" to goats, I breed and train performance horses and Dobermans (and have judging credentials on both) as well as having bred Llamas, Alpacas, and Exotics. I have had goats under my management before, but in the capacity of being companions for breeding stallions. I also have owned for a short time a Nigerian Dwarf milking doe (she was just freshened at the time) but it was a much more casual relationship I have had with them.
One of my many business ventures is I own and operate an adventure hiking company here on the beautiful island of Kauai (Hawaii) and guide visitors through some of its more remote and stunning scenery. In many areas around the Canyons and cliff areas we encounter a lot of wild (feral) goats running in astonishingly vertical spaces. It occured to me that it would be easier -and infinitelty more fun and entertaining- to do the hiking tours with goats carrying the gear. I have packed horses, mules, Llamas, and have little day packs for some of my dogs, it occured to me it probably wouldn't be all that different to do it with a goat.
A little bit more colorful background on me, is that I was a professional contortionist and movie stunt woman. I grew up performing occasionally with the circus, and we had a Saanen/Angora goat who was made into a unicorn (his name was Lancelot, he is quite famous on the internet) and his kind of different original owner was working with a very minor surgical procedure to make goats (or any horned animal) into a Unicorn by moving their horn buds before they fuse to the skull (sometime in the first few days after birth... which seems to me to be entirely less distasteful than the disbudding procedures that are already common practice at that age for goats) So I had this idea of doing hiking tours with unicorn goats (just because it was a way to make it just a bit more interesting and fun).
Just as I was coming up with this idea (before I was even thinking of looking) A friend of mine called me with a little orphan baby goat which was exactly what I was describing to her. The family didnt want to raise an orphan, and if I didnt take her, they were going to feed her to their pig hunting dogs. Yes, it is gruesome and barberic, but that kind of thinking is sadly common in the local culture on the islands. So the short version of that, is I ended up with an orphan doe of undetermined origin. If I were to make a guess I would say she is probably part feral, spanish meat, possibly alpine, kiko or Boer (as those are the most common breeds here and the place she came from has mostly Boers, Spanish, and captured ferals). She LOOKS like a little black Oberhasili with long ears... her ears stand base to tip, but they are twice as long as the Alpine and Nigerians I've seen. I would say she was out of one of their ferals, just because she is much more alert, observant and mentally engaged than some of the other regular domestic bred ones I have helped raise in the past.
Anyway, this is my first adventure in raising an orphan... what a series of adventures it has been!
I thought I would say ALOHA and introduce myself (and "Moesha: the Blaque Unicorn") and my new forray into goat packing with my planned "Blaque Unicorn Adventures" project.
RE: ALOHA Everyone! - Charlie Horse - 07-03-2014
Pack goats will attract lots of people to the hike, thats for sure. I'm not sure a female is going to be that excellent for packing, but if you're only carrying water and food for a day hike, I'm sure it'd be light enough. Anything involving animals gets a lot of attention. I love seeing how some people I encounter on the trail seem terrified of the goats, while others have no fear of even the horned ones. I used to have a pack yak. Everyone was worried about that one LOL.
I guess on the islands you have to take the breeds that are available, since shipping animals out there can be expensive. The key to a good pack goat is to get a big male, tame him by bottle feeding or just spending a whole lot of time with him, and then fixing him at 5 months or so to make sure everything matures right. Disbudding only works so-so on males. My shelby has some nice knobs that break off every six months or so. Its hard to kill the horns on an alpine. If you moved one of the buds over, you'd want to be sure the other one was well removed. It'd produce an amusing goat, though I really dont know if the horn's would be that useful for headbutting other goats anymore. You'd also want to make sure the horn was of the alpine-style scimitar rather than the boer style curving-to-flat side blades. That'd just look weird. You'd also need to make sure it was oriented correctly.
Perhaps you could take the extra horn bud and graft it to one of the horse's foreheads for a real unicorn. Llamas are weird enough without a horn, but one with horns would be pretty interesting. .. Especially if it was a rhino-type nose horn. Or graft all the extra horns to one goat and create a goat god and open a portal to the netherworld or something. See. Now you've got me thinking.
RE: ALOHA Everyone! - Nanno - 07-03-2014
Welcome! I look forward to hearing about your adventures! Goats certainly do get a LOT of attention on the trail. We always plan extra time on our hikes on the more popular trails because we know we'll get stopped by curious strangers all along the way, especially when they see my big one-horned packgoat, Cuzco. Yes, my goat only has one horn, but that's not by design. A friend's dog chased him off a 30-foot cliff when he was four years old. My dad calls him "the unigoat".