Oh anon, that is a difficult question for me to narrow down! I love almost everything about them, but I guess the biggest thing is that they are enormous goofballs. They have a lot of personality and are reliably hilarious - but they are also reliably mischievous. The saying goes that if a fence won’t hold water, it won’t hold a goat, and in my experience that’s not far off! However, I think that only adds to their charm - for better or worse, things are never boring with goats around!
To keep expanding on their many good qualities: They work for me because they are friendly and interactive and happy to see you (especially if you come bearing treats), but they aren’t nearly as emotionally needy as say, dogs, and don’t require so much time and devotion from you in order to not feel neglected. They are just fine on their own for awhile as long as they have food and water, so that can be helpful for me, personally, since I have difficulty sticking to a regular schedule.They are fun to watch graze/browse, the way their nimble lips seek out every delicious morsel they can find. It’s impressive to watch them plow through horrible thorny things like blackberries and rose bushes without blinking an eye, and it’s always funny to watch them chew on a stick right after they’ve been picky about their hay.It’s also funny to watch them fight/play with one another (unless someone is really getting bullied, which does sometimes happen), and yet after knocking heads for an hour then they’ll suddenly cuddle up and snooze together. It’s like, “Hey asshole, you’re lower in the hierarchy than I am and I need to make sure you know that, but it’s nothing personal.”On the more practical production side of things, they are impressive in that they are extremely efficient, can thrive in difficult environments, and for these reasons are known as “the poor man’s cow.” This term is often used as an insult, which just reveals classist attitudes. What’s wrong with feeding the poor? Cows are expensive and wasteful by comparison, and even though goats have a reputation for deforestation and destroying their environment through quick reproduction and their ability to eat a wide range of vegetation, really, it the fault of humans to not manage their talents wisely. And it’s not like we humans don’t destroy our environment as well…Goat milk is one of the closest matches to human milk, and goats have nursed human babies for ages. I’ve seen many an old photograph of children nursing directly off of goats, and I believe that is where the term “nanny goat” came from. Some goat people find this name offensive and are trying to replace it with just “doe”, but I find the term nanny goat (and billy goat, for that matter, which some also consider offensive and are trying to replace with “buck”) charming and a nod to just how useful they are. They are also used a lot to nurse other mammals, such as orphaned lambs, and even horses and larger animals. I even read about a team of 17 nanny goats who provided milk to raise an orphaned rhinoceros calf at a zoo back in like, 1905 or sometime around there.Goats are one of the oldest domesticated animals, and they have been a friend to humanity for a very, very long time despite being wrongly associated with the devil, scapegoats, etc, etc. and suffering because of it. Another saying is “sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell”, and that is because goats are free-thinkers. They don’t follow the rules, don’t blindly follow the same way that sheep do. They “misbehave” more than sheep, so naturally the church would not approve.TLDR: goats are amazing.
And finally, for me personally, I love the goats because being with them is one of the very few things that can actually force my mind to slow down. When I sit out in the pasture or in the barn with them, and they’re just doing their goaty things: fighting, eating, resting and ruminating, it helps me focus on just being. On just existing. It can calm down my restlessness and anxiety, and is the closest to meditation that I’ve ever been able to do. I owe them a lot.
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