Chat
07-03-2014, 08:36 PM
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.
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.