As you probably know, our sweet Clyde died at the end of May. Bonnie seemed to handle this better than I did. Still, goats are herd animals. I knew she was uneasy being by herself. She needed a new billy.
I called my friend, Eric Jones. Eric gave B&C to us back in 2019. I wanted to let Eric know about Clyde’s death. I also wanted to get the address of the slaughterhouse where he had gotten them. Eric came through. He not only told me where to find the slaughterhouse, he offered to help me collect a new goat.
On 3 June, we met at the slaughterhouse. One of the staff brought me back to the pen where they had the goats and sheep. By chance that morning every one of the animals in the pen was white. If an animal had any other color, it was black and that was only on some of the sheep. There were only a few goats that weren’t completely white. But there was one. He was way in the back with his brown head sticking up over the mass of white sheep and goats. He looked like a gold nugget amid a sea of white cotton.
He was clearly a billy from the size of his horns. The question was: Is he a wether goat, aka, a castrated male. The staffer assured me that he was. “No nuts on that one,” he said with a big grin. “Just horns.” “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take him.”
I should state here and now that a slaughterhouse is not going to give away a goat. The man pulled my selection onto a scale and weighed him. I had selected 120 pounds of very strong year-old male goat. And that’s what I paid for. If I told you how much you’d probably laugh. If it weren’t for the fact that it was me paying, I’d laugh, too. But Bonnie was waiting and as scared as this goat was, he was so damn cute I didn’t even hesitate. Nobody ever said I was smart!
Eric and I tied his legs together and hefted him into the back of Eric’s SUV. I had planned to bring him home in the back of my truck, but Eric felt that he’d be calmer if he were in an enclosed space. This proved to be a good idea because the goat had freed two of his legs before Eric got to our house. Eric managed to get him out and dragged him into the “back forty” before Luanne and I got home. Once it was Eric and me holding him instead of just poor Eric, we got him moved him into the enclosure with Bonnie.
How would Bonnie handle having a new roommate? She took to him immediately. She sniffed him and didn’t try and stop him from climbing up the ramp to her balcony. She followed him up the ramp and acted like he’d been with her for years. One concern down; how would this new goat treat Bonnie?
He was clearly more worried about us humans than he was Bonnie. He watched our every move. Bonnie nudged him a little to see if he’d respond but he just kept staring at us. When one of us would move to one side or the other he looked like a tennis judge, swinging his head to try and watch everyone at once.
“Are you going to name him Clyde?” asked Eric. Clyde was Clyde, Luanne’s “therapy goat” and my sweet Clydester. This goat was neither. He was that brown-headed creature bobbing among other creatures, all of which were white. Again, the image of a gold nugget moving about in that sea of white came to mind. “No,” I replied. “I’m going to call him Nugget.” When I explained why to Eric and Luanne, they both agreed – he was a Nugget.
I’ve taken a while to write about Nugget precisely because he’s not Clyde. When Eric first brought B&C into our lives, both goats were pets. They loved attention. They came when you called. Both would walk -- or run -- to you as soon as you entered their space. They wanted “loves and rubs” from humans. Nugget is different. He’s not a pet goat. He’s very wary of everyone. He has some scars on his flanks, which make me think he may well have been abused. His obvious aversion to being touched or held reenforces that belief. His broad sharp horns and his initial anxiety made us fear that he might injure Bonnie. To mitigate this possibility, we wrapped his horns in foam rubber and duct tape, putting a double layer of foam on the tips. As it turned out, Nugget is not a threat to Bonnie, or to us for that matter. He is playful, though. He and Bonnie buck and ram each other the same way Clyde did when he was younger. These bouts are not done in anger; the goats are simply establishing who is who and which one gets to eat from which bucket of grain. They don’t try to hurt the other goat. The arguments over the feed troughs are their way of saying “This is mine. Go away!” Sometimes Bonnie wins. Other times she backs away and lets Nugget win, moving over to the other trough. She acted the same with Clyde but in those contests Clyde would use his size and force the issue. Here, Bonnie has the size advantage and she’s not afraid to use it.
The foam on his horns has come off. Nugget no longer has to suffer the indignity of looking like he’s wearing pool noodles. Actually, I don’t think he minded the foam; we thought he looked silly, but he never seemed to even notice.
As I spend more time with him, he’s beginning to trust me a little. At first, he wouldn’t tolerate me touching him at all. He would run to the back of the enclosure and stare at me. If I walked toward him, he’d run behind the goat house and the feeder. He wanted something substantial between him and me. After a few days, I started handfeeding them carrots. I thought Bonnie liked peanuts and peanut butter. She’s an absolute whore for carrots. Nugget saw her being fed and slowly decided to move closer, hoping to snatch a carrot out of my hand. He tried unsuccessfully a few times and then decided it might be okay to stay long enough to bite off a piece before retreating a safe distance to chew his prize. A week later, he would come up to me as I came into the enclosure, examining my hands for carrots or other offerings. He still wanted to stay away from any hand not holding food, though. If I reached out at all, he would jump back and take up a flight stance. Now, three and half months after arriving here, he will let me scratch and pet his face and neck, but only when I have food in the other hand. His trust extends only so far. He’s always ready to run away. I think it may be months before he will let me pet him the way Bonnie does. But I have time.
