Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting More on the packgoats

Now that photobucket is back, I figured I'd redo and expand the intro thread:
Baby photos from late March
Thor:

Odin:

Ivar:

Ragnar:

Gunnar:

Loki:

Nigel:

First hikes:

The dreaded water trainings:

Outstanding!

I’ve always loved goats and learned about the packing breed from a professor here at the U about 20 years ago... someday.

Cool, what breed?

Only saw one with a pack on? ...grin...

Very cool. I'd wondered about them crossing creeks. We raise meat goats and they absolutely hate water.

Oh yeah they frigging hate water. About the only time I can get them to cross voluntarily is if all their buddies are on the other side or if they can jump the whole creek/ditch. Even getting them to take a drink takes a lot of patience or heat. I’ve got a place to hunt in mind that will require them crossing a pretty substantially wide creek, but probably won’t be very deep in September or October.

Other socializing aspects we are working on are dealing with new dogs on the trail. It’s one reason they need to stay behind me when hiking, so I can encounter the dog first and call to its owner. Also, I’m a little worried that when Ragnar is 200 plus pounds he will kill a perfectly nice but too curious dog. His balls, after banding, must have slipped up inside and displaced his brain. He hates dogs and will charge them. He’s punched ours in the face if they get too nosy and reared up to take pretty devastating swings that would have done some damage if the dogs didn’t evade him. I don’t want to totally discourage this, as I left the horns on to help them deal with predators.

Breeds are all Alpine and Alpine crosses. Thor is 3/4 Alpine 1/4 Toggenburg, Ivar is half Saanen l, half Alpine. Rest are full blooded Alpine. About 3.5 months now and the three largest are over 80 pounds. Smallest is Loki at 60ish but his gains are good, just had a rough start as a quad with his three brothers dying at birth.

We tried goats but for our purposes, llamas worked better. Goats are darn good packers, too, though. One thing I did learn was that I'll never again have goats with horns. They're hard on fences and will just stand and butt the sides of a barn all day long. They knocked the siding right off the barn.
They're a lot more personable than llamas. Llamas don't want to be touched. They hate having their heads or feet touched. They'll do the job and do it well but they're not friendly. Goats, otoh, love to have their ears scratched. They can be your buddies...to the point of being a PIA sometimes.

Did they react to the snake in pic #9? Looks like it is hauling out of there.

Nigel looked at it and snorted an alarm, the rest didn't care or notice. The snake was moving slowly, so I'm not sure if they all noticed.

Only had three of the boys up in the high country with me today. Needed to fix up the stock rack so had limited room in the kennels.

Ya I tried that gamble and lost once and won once. The first time , it caused me to pack out, and have to use facebook to find said goat. The second time I was in the west elks, and finally had a battle of wills with one ..so I crossed the water with a leader ..anchored behind a rock and started pulling ... I had to do it , all the good elk hunting was on the other side. Said goat, decided to cross creeks peacefully there after

I've done the goats in water thing. They don't like it at all at first. I only had 2 adult goats but they learned fast and didn't give me any problems after the 1st time. I've also done it with llamas and their 1st time can be memorable, too. In fact, I'm taking a 3 day trip starting tomorrow afternoon. I'm taking 2 adults and a youngster who'll be on his 1st overnighter. He's been in a little water once but we'll have a good stream crossing on this one. It might be a rodeo. I'll put him between the older ones and hopefully he'll just go through.

Kevin were those rented or borrowed goats? Not sure I’d heard of someone losing a goat they hand raised.

Cute little buggers!

Raised. Overall I liked the goats, but the wife wasn't a fan after they entered the house through an open screen door and had a good time unsupervised.

lol..... I don't leave ANYTHING parked in an area where we're keeping the goats.