Here's my 3-legged goat story to share [View all]

This little Nubian milk goat was born in spring of 2018. My wife and I were late to dinner with my brother and his GF and we were with her mother in the barn because it was cold and February and wanted to get them dried off fast. I had to pull her out 3rd of triplets. She came out with her front leg bent in an odd way and the tendons never attached in the last knuckle above her hoof on the left front. I tried all sorts of minerals for her and wrapping it but it never healed right. She is fully functional but walks with a severe limp carrying the front leg always bent at the knee and the hoof flops back and forth so she has no stability on it. To see her walk with the herd you would not even notice unless you focus in on her individually and how she walking because she is that adapted to the disability.

So I had too many goats this summer and a lady from a few miles down the road came wanting some does she could breed and would be good milkers but my goats are all registered and good milk lines and out of her price range. Finally I told her ok I will sell you that little three legged goat and another runt girl who didn't grow much very cheap if you want them since they shouldn't be registered and I don't want unregistered kids. They should still milk fine...

I was asking her where she would keep them, does she have a dry shed and decent fences because you can't throw these goats outside. People think goats are tough and rugged but they are not, they are picky what they eat and they can handle cold, but they need a dry space to sleep throughout the year. They are really miserable in rain and will get sick. She said oh yes I have a nice shed and 4 foot fences and I already have pygmy goats they can go with. These are little goats much smaller than our big Nubians even though the 2 she was talking were very small. These two might get 100 lbs whereas my big does go 150. I told her explicitly just make sure you keep these girls in a secure pen for a few days and feed them so they know where is home before you throw them out in a pasture. They are not wild but also are not bottle babies so they have to get used to you feeding them before they warm up to you.

So she took them home and that night just after dark texts me says "the doe with the bad leg flew out of my fence and escaped into the woods." I offered to come help her look and brought my wife and a bucket of grain. The first thing I saw was her little dirt pen with all her goats and a tiny 8x10 shed like youd put your lawnmower in and her fences were made out of wooden pallets nailed together on their side and probably about 32" nowhere near 4' and even worse because they were like wooden ladders for goats to climb I went all through her thick woods in the dark for over an hour full of undergrowth and briars and stick tights and never saw that goat. That lady wouldn't even come in there.

I said well call me again if you see her but I was not hopeful she would come back because she literally had escaped as soon as she released her she had no idea that place was where she belonged. The next morning on a Sunday she texts says "the neighbor found her on his deck and I'm going to get her now." I texted back that she should wait for us we were coming to help. By the time we got over there about 4 miles away she said the little three legged goat had jumped over the rail and off the side of an 8' deck and back into the woods. I asked her where she went in the woods and she couldn't answer said she wasn't watching! SO I spent a couple more hours searching her thick ass woods and down to a creek a few hundred yards back and lost a bunch of skin back there calling and rattling grain still found no damn goat. After a few days and she never called I figured coyotes got that little girl they are all over these woods and at night sounds like a horror movie. They don't come on my place because I have LGDs who work all night but they sure run those woods and creeks where that lady lives.

ONE MONTH PASSES

Two weeks ago my mom calls me who has been taking care of my aunt who broke her hip. They all live about a half mile away as crow flies across a big valley and creek and couple roads. She says "hey what color was that goat you sold and escaped?" I said well she was mostly black. She says "oh I think thats her then out here hanging out with Mona's concrete deer." I said well I doubt that considering that lady where she ran off lived 4 miles due north and my aunts house is due east. But we went and damned if she wasn't there still hiding right between two concrete deer. Unfortunately after a month surviving in the wild she would not let me within 30 feet of her and immediately took off into the woods like a bat out of hell. For a goat running on 3 legs she's fast as hell! Well I dumped out some grain hoping she'd come back later and went home. I immediately went to the barn to milk my does it was evening and a guy drives right up the driveway says "Hey are you missing a goat?" I said well she's not really mine but yes. He says well she's a little crippled goat running down the middle of the road on the other side of your property. She had gotten home almost as fast as we had. I went out to follow her and found her along a back fence but she couldn't get in and ran off when she saw me again.

Now the problem is my entire farm is surrounded by goat proof field fence and theres not really any gates in the back plus theres cows back there if I opened a hole they'd be out. Even in the front I have a gate over my driveway to keep the livestock dogs from running out in the road. They still escape if there's any predators or dogs out there and chase them but the gate seems to keep them mostly out of the road. I left it open for her and over the next week we saw her at dusk almost everyday and she even ran right across in front of the driveway at least 3 times and I couldn't get her to turn in. Each time we almost got her in here comes a car or the neighbor on a mower or my dogs go running out barking because all they see is something outside the fence that isn't supposed to be there even though they are good with goats. One neighbor tried to trap her between his shed and my back fence even though I told him this would just spook her and we had no way of corralling her in a space 30 feet wide. Another neighbor on the front side of my lake chased her on his lawn mower and she ran right through his back door into his house and out the open garage door in the front!

I fenced off a pen behind the barn from everything and opened a hole to the outside hoping she'd try to sneak in the side away from the dogs at night. No luck with that either. And then a couple days go by and no-one saw her so I pretty much had given up. My wife was getting very irritated that I had built a barricade across the driveway to leave open the outer gate and try to keep the dogs from running up there and scaring her. Then on my last Sunday before school started and I had to go back to teaching someone pulls in and says hey you have a goat with a broken leg running down the road out there. I was like yeah right I know but its hopeless to catch her. I went walking back that side were there's a couple acres of steep sloped wood leading up to the fence and the road on the south side of my property. All the way back I found her in a place I had lost her before. I ran down into the creek and cut the flood gap apart pulling it out into the neighbors field then back up the hill circling a shed he has and she was still there. She popped up up and went running and I couldn't get around the shed fast enough to see where. So I searched and searched an hour and nothing. Gave up and left the gap open even risking the other goats in there getting out to see if she'd come in. When I got back to the house through the woods they were all up going over the goat bridge over my driveway to the barn and I saw a limper! She had found that gap and ran up and found those goats in the pasture then drug them all up to the barn as fast as they could!

Now I had a bunch of fence repair to do but she's home and she's with her goats and she's calming down. I can't get rid of her because she wants to be here so bad. She came 4 miles on 3 legs and survived over a month in the wild. I didn't even tell that lady she came back because I don't think she has a good place and I don't think she tried very hard to get her at all. My wife named her "La Vida Loca" because she wants to live so badly.

I know I could have told that story in about a paragraph instead of writing a book but I just needed to share how stressed out it made me HA!