Читать книгу Know Your Goats - Jack Byard - Страница 5

Goats are a diverse range of beautiful (and sometimes rare) animals. Bucks and does, billies or nannies, are the source of many a children’s story (who hasn’t read the Norwegian fairy tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff to their children?). Goats were taken into the human fold more than ten thousand years ago and most breeds have been wandering the fields, hillsides and mountains since time immemorial. From some we obtain fibre to create exquisite mohair and cashmere clothing. Others give us possibly more mundane (but equally important and extremely healthy) meat and milk, the latter frequently being turned into mouth-watering cheeses, bringing joy to me and a living to many farmers.

Goats are browsers and prefer unwanted brush, briar and weeds to grass, their lips and tongues selecting only the tastiest plants. Extremely intelligent and curious, they are also experts at escaping from the most secure fields.

In addition they make excellent pets: you may look twice when you see a goat wandering through a hospital ward, nursing home or rehabilitation centre, but therapy goats “bring love, affection, laughter and calmness to people ailing in mind, body or spirit”.

Jack Byard, Bradford, 2019

NOTE: All weights, sizes and measurements in this book are averages based on breed records and the terrain in which the animals live. Male goats are known as billy or buck; female goats as nanny or doe.