If you are unfamiliar with horned goats, you may not know that they seem to always find a way to get their head stuck in a fence. Our fainting goat Laverne is guilty as charged. This is her fourth time since we moved to this property. Some goat owners resort to drastic measures to stop the head in the fence goat trick. They attach either a piece of PVC pipe or a stick to the horns with duct tape or clamps. In the goat world this contraption is known as the Stick-of-Shame. I found this example on the internet.
My friend Kelly’s biggest fear petsitting for us when we went to the coast recently was having a goat’s head stuck in the fence. Luckily it didn’t happen on her watch.
I was dealing with a feud between Jack and Diane this morning over Jack’s ass blocking Diane’s access to her bucket of oats. There was a lot of kicking and the dust was flying. I heard a strange sound and then Tucker was going nuts. I looked to see why and found this; Laverne with her head stuck in the fence, again. Maybe she was trying to get that interesting piece of pipe on the other side of the fence?
She was in a particularly difficult position and I wasn’t able to free her so I took off to the house to wake Michael. Tucker was so excited about this little bit of mayhem. He fancies himself quite the little ranch dog.
Michael even had a more difficult time freeing her this time, so much so that I put the camera down to try to help. He got her out without any damage to her head or the fence. She shook it off, got a big drink of water and went off to eat. Next time? Duct tape and a stick!
Maybe I’ll put the Stick-of-Shame on Laverne when we go out-of-town. The good thing about having fainting goats is that they don’t thrash around and get injured trying to free themselves. At least my fainting goats don’t. They just wait patiently for human assistance.
KathyB. says
I love it ! I have a Jacob sheep who repeatedly gets herself stuck , her head on one side of the fence…the rear end on the other. Yes, my sheep are like the rest of us… the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and sticking your head where it doesn’t belong creates some tricky problems. I am going to try this the next time she gets stuck.
Andrea says
Tell Kelly escaping goat tricks are way better than dead goat tricks. I will never forget the one.