Rural Trader Blogs

A Goat Named Bok

During visits from the Scottish Parliament, she has developed a penchant for welcoming her favourite animals into the house plot at The Ranch. The usual suspects are kunekune pigs and large white goats. She witnesses them pooping on the paths and decks, digging small quarries in the course of devouring food, removing every leaf from the rose bush and chomping through a geranium bush as I would a cheeseburger, which I assure you is neither slow nor pretty. A short time later I drop her at the airport and return to The Ranch to coax her friends back to their domiciles. Contrary to popular opinion I don’t really mind this but on her last visit she took it to a whole new level...

Recently one of our two long term goats lay down and died. The remaining goat seems to behave much the same as he did when he had company. Partly out of a suspicion that he was lonely, and partly out of a desire to get herself and The Wee Man out of my hair for a while, she set off for Glen Murray, west of Huntly, to buy a six-week old feral goat.

Later in the day they duly returned with said goat. The most striking thing about it was its size, or lack of it. This thing was the size of a cat. It came vaccinated, well-acclimatised to people, desexed and deliced for $60. After letting it out of its box it explored the house plot and followed us around. During this time I noticed how similar its markings were to that of a springbok so we named it Bok and, as darkness fell it followed us down to the paddock where senior goat was grazing. Although Bok seemed happy there, he also saw no reason why he shouldn’t follow us by just walking through the fence.

I took an unused dog kennel into the paddock and tethered Bok to a tree beside it. This is where he spent the first few nights after his arrival but during the days I would let him roam around the house plot where I have to admit he was quite well behaved. There have been, of course, numerous poorly placed ablutions but he seems to be getting the message about entering the house. I think the turning point here was when I shoved him away across the deck with my foot and by an unfortunate combination of a slippery deck and four shiny little hooves, poor little Bok skated clear across the deck, under the balustrade and off into thin air on his way to the soft ground some two metres below. I had seen him make this jump of his own free will before when he thought the sixteen year old mongrel was going to maul him. Nonetheless I glanced over to check he’d landed safely, which he had. Bok threw me the hairy eyeball, bleated and moped off. He didn’t revisit the deck for some time though.

Bok has, however, made the place his home and takes every opportunity to explore new things with great enthusiasm. He is incredibly agile and thinks nothing of jumping on a hosereel swivelling off a wall or the heavy basket of tea tree firewood yours truly is struggling to manoeuvre into the house.

Each morning I give him 500ml of Anlamb but have recently dropped it down to 250ml which seems to have been successful in curbing the ‘afternoon runs’ he started to suffer from. Currently he’s very keen on eating grass but also attacks his bottle with great gusto. Probably the most remarkable thing about him is the way he follows me around. He sticks to my side like glue – much more so than a dog.

After a few days I made a run for him across the lawn in front of the house with about 25 metres of fencing wire pegged into the ground at each end. Bok is on a two metre chain up and down it and I’ve put the kennel alongside. He seems quite happy there but I still let him roam free for extended periods, usually until he’s disgraced himself in some fashion. The great thing is when he’s mown that patch of lawn I can simply move the wire.

We currently co-exist in relative harmony but I look forward to the day that he is too big to escape from standard fencing. Many tell me this day will never come.