In the six years or more I’ve been farming goats, I’ve come to love them. The odd randy billygoat aside, they’re gentle and playful. They’re perennially ravenous. The nannies are attentive and fiercely protective mothers. And they’re notably inquisitive: when I’m working in a paddock, sheep run away but goats sidle up to check out what I’m doing. Yesterday morning Sweetheart Vivienne sent me an email titled ‘I saw this goat walking down the mall yesterday and I wondered where she was going’, and including this link. I clicked the link apprehensively, saw the photograph, and prepared myself for some dumb journo taking a cheap shot at goats. Like ‘gamblers are goats’, ‘don’t let gambling get your goat’ and so on. Wrong I was. The two goats were props in the media event, but their symbolism was positive. Tim Costello, the CEO of World Vision, said ‘People don't realise that a goat is more than just milk and meat for a poor family — it is status. If you have a goat you are no longer on the bottom of the pile’. Nice one, Tim. I agree, of course. On our farm we have about a hundred goats, so we’re well up the pile. And by the way, doesn’t the Toggenburg in the photograph have an inquisitive, intelligent look on her face.
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