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09-01-2014, 09:21 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2014, 09:27 PM by michael.)
Took two of our goats out camping this last weekend. We took our milker Mirage and our packer in training Evidence. Wanted to see how they would handle just hanging around camp.
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Tried highlining for the first time.
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They settled down and were fine with it, they are kind of hard to see. We let them off as much as they would stay out of mischief and when we could keep an eye on them.
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This is Evidence he is about 5 months, he is taking to camping like a natural.
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This is our milker Mirage enjoying the view.
They both did great, and we worked with our friends dog getting him used to being around goats. It all went well, we did put them in the trailer at night, we are hoping to get a guard dog for them so they can be out at night. The milker did great, milking with no stanchion or grain. So proud of them and my daughter who did at least half the work and training, and all the milking!!!
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Really, most goats seem to be born for this. Its funny to me to see the dairy/meat goat people on goatspot get so amazed that you can 'actually go hiking with a goat'! I bet most of their friendlier goats would do just fine, but they have never tried.
On my first night out with the goats in the desert, Shelby was looking down at me in my sleeping bag like a creep for several minutes. Then PLOP he bedded down right near me after he figured out this must be bed time. It worked great until a friends adult herd of loose goats made some noises in the weeds and he kept jumping up all alert. One of those times he straddled me and after he figured all was clear... Peed on my sleeping bag. I now have a hammock.
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That's funny Charlie. When we got goats the first time in the late 90's my son wanted to sleep in the barn with them, he came in about 1:30 am and said he got peed on. I guess it's natural for them. Lol.
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Very cool! Thanks for sharing. I haven't highlined mine yet, but hope they take to it well.
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We tried letting ours range free as we had the spot to ourselves. They thought the tents were boulders and wanted to jump on them. They figured it out real quick. We did highline them which they did well with. We are going again this weekend so we will see how things go this time around.
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Looks like you had a great time! Last year when we went to the NAPgA Rendezvous I saw that most people were
low lining their goats at night. I hadn't given low lining much thought until then, but it looks a lot easier and possibly safer than high lining. You just run the rope along the ground instead of overhead.
Just a thought about leaving goats loose in camp, please don't do it at night even if they learn not to jump on your tents. While most goats want to stay in camp, they do sometimes take off and get lost. All it takes is a bear to wander nearby and one whiff could send even the clingiest goat bolting for the woods. They can't always find their way back. They may also stray just far enough from camp to become attractive to predators that would otherwise pass them up as being too close to people. I used to leave our goat wandering loose at night because he had good camp manners and never went far, but then I heard stories of people losing goats that way and I realized he was much safer on a tether after bedtime.
Thanks for sharing your adventures!
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Thank you Nanno for the insight.
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We did put them in a trailer at night because of predators. We are hoping to go backpacking in a couple weeks and I'm not really sure how we are going to safeguard in that situation. We used a spray bottle to teach them camp manners, it was pretty repetitive but they were getting the hang of things by the end of the weekend. Hope to eventually make this a normal weekend event but that is still in the future. Thanks Nanno we did have a good time and the goats got better forage than their normal fare.
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