We’ve already talked about the goat’s milk dairy industry, in both the context of fresh milk and goat cheese. Both are fantastic uses for goats milk, just a step below using goat milk to actually feed baby goats! I’d like to now introduce a third use of goats milk to you: to make soap!
Goat’s milk soap is something of a luxury, and not by any stretch one of America’s most common types of soap. You can find it at specialty shops, farmers markets, gift shops, and other such places, but you might have to hunt just a little bit.
It is a shame it is not more common, though, because it has so many benefits as quality soap! Goat’s milk has many nutrients in it that can be used by the skin when it is washed with goat milk soap, especially vitamin A and antioxidants. It is also incredibly moisturizing and gentle on the skin.
One of the lovely things about goats milk soap is that it wan be made at home. You may have to order the ingredients, as some of them are not common household items, but the process itself is relatively simple.
The general procedure of making goat’s milk starts out with the milk itself. Some people like to heat and then freeze the milk to break up the fat globules. The next step is to add lye to the milk. A Martha Stewart endorsed recipe calls for three oz. of lye for every 12 oz. of goat milk. This part of the recipe has an element of danger, because lye is a strong base and extremely caustic. That one scene from fight club comes to mind. But it’s easy to stay safe by using gloves and a face mask. The mask is necessary because when lye comes in contact with water (there is water in milk) the reaction it undergoes is exothermic, meaning it will heat up the mixture, and will give off fumes.
The lye is mixed in with the milk until no lye chips remain. After the lye is completely mix, you can add specialty oils and other additives to personalize the soap. The soap can be poured into a long, rectangular roll and cut when cooled, as is the traditional method, or poured into muffin tins or other such molds. There is a certain amount of aging that must be done to get the perfect soap. In the video below, Amy Warden doesn’t cut her soap until two days after she makes it. Many producers advocate for a few weeks of aging before using for best results. There are also alternative methods to make the soap, with some being easier and more affordable than other. One great debate that happens is the benefits of a “hot” vs. a “cold” method of making the soap.
One of the lovely things about goats milk soap is that you can dye it practically any color, though it is a lovely cream when pure, and you can add many different things to it to enhance it. Some people will add lavender extract or other scents, or exfoliating substances such as rosemary leaves or seeds. Because goat’s milk soap is considered a luxury item, there is also a culture of wrapping the soap with great care to make the packaging beautiful.
I’d encourage you to try to use goat’s milk soap; I think it’s a good purchase on a “treat yo self” day. Happy sudsing!
If you look into a goat’s eyes, you may be surprised what you see. Their eyes have an incredible distinctive horizontal pupil sitting like a black rectangle halfway between their eyelids. Factor in the golden irises that goats often sport and you have a combination that has made people describe goat’s eyes as lifeless, soulless, and creepy. It may have even led to seeing goats as a satanic figure. But, according to a study at UC Berkley, scientists may have discovered why goats have such distinctive horizontal pupils. And just as it often does, it comes down to many years of natural selection and an adaption designed to help survive and thrive.
Goats are not the only animals with slit-like pupils. Cats and snakes come to mind, with their long, narrow pupils. But both of these species, and in fact most of the species that have elongated pupils, have vertical oriented pupils. So what, then, has marked the difference between this type of eye and a horizontal pupil? It was found that whether a slit-like pupil was oriented vertically or horizontally came down to what the animal ate. For meat eating predators, like that snake or the cat, a vertical pupil was much more common. The narrow field of vision was perfect for fixating on prey, focusing, and going in for the kill. For herbivores like goats, a horizontal pupil was more advantageous.
Goat Eye source:
Cat Eyes
Snake Eye
Predators know that goat is a great source of nutrients. A goat, though, does not have the best tools to fight for its life. It may be able to thrust its horns forward and stab, or kick its front legs, but its primary tactic to avoid becoming a meal is flight. For this method to be effective, though, goats have to be able to detect a treat before has ahold of them. Goats spend much of their time with their head next to the ground to eat. In order to see a predator coming at them, their vision has to have a wide range. They also have to be ready to turn if a predator is chasing them and come along side them. A horizontal pupil allows them to see an incredible range around them and monitor their environment. Their eye can also rotate in the socket more than ours can, so they have a panoramic view of the world on all sides of them.
Scientists verified that the wide pupil gives a wider range of vision through computer simulations that compared the anatomy and function of goat eyes to human eyes.
It never ceases to amaze me that each animal is built to fulfill its place in the world. In this case, the devil is in the details (a joke because so many people find goat eyes evil-looking).
I still think they’re cute! source:dykn.com
*In the U.S., the top goat predator is actually the domestic dog. Other canines, such as coyotes, also pose a constant threat. Most goats living here are domestic, though, and are kept safe by fences and nightly enclosure.
This week, I’d like to take the chance to tell you about my goat.
I know what’s running through your mind. She has a goat?!?!! Why hasn’t she mentioned this before? Where does she keep it? What’s its name?
WHY HAVEN’T WE BEEN TOLD ABOUT THIS GOAT?
Well, it’s because it is not really in my life anymore. You can bet your buttons that if I had a goat in my backyard I would talk about it nonstop, to everyone. My goat lives somewhere across the world, with a family that I have never met.
I got her as a Christmas present two years ago. It was arguably the best present that I’ve ever received. Through the nonprofit organization “Heifer International”, my parents purchased a goat in my name that went to impoverished family that needed it.
Click the pictures to link to more info
Heifer International operates under that old adage “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for life.” In its early years, the idea was that people could donate money to sponsor an animal for a family that needed it. The animal could provide milk, meat, wool, offspring, and power for tools like plows, depending on what type of animal it was. Heifer International would give the animal to a family and train them on how to take care of it and grow their business. Today, you can donate a cow, water buffalo, bees, a sheep, a goat, a llama, an alpaca, rabbits, chickens, geese, a pig, fish fingerlings, or ducks. The training and immediate resources this animal gives to the family can become a source of income and nutrition. The offspring and the training can also be passed on to community members to lift whole communities out of poverty.
Today, the repertoire of Heifer International has expanded. You can choose what initiative you want your money to go to, or decide to send a general donation that can be put where the nonprofit feels their recipients need it most. Some of their other projects include providing resources for sustainable farming, providing necessities like stoves, irrigation, and nutrition, and empowering women. Your donation can give building supplies for houses or trees for a farm.
Heifer International has also expanded the ways that people who want to get involved can help them fundraise. In addition to the traditional method of donating directly to fund an animal, you can facilitate one of the many programs they’ve designed. They have a reading and donation program for schools, and specially designed programs for congregations that have a faith-based component. Heifer International also has several ways to get involved in service projects, both in the U.S. and overseas.
I think that is so important for every person living on this big Earth to take responsibility for our co-inhabitants. I don’t
want to sound mushy or sentimental here, but there is a lot of bad in the world. Nearly one billion people live in extreme poverty. Heifer International has helped 25 million families lift themselves out of hunger and poverty by empowering them with animals, like goats, and more. And that is incredible.
If you’d like to donate to this awesome charity, click here. If you’d like to donate a goat, click here. And if you’d like to learn more, click here or listen to Alton Brown explain it:
Last week we discussed the goat digestive system, in all its ruminant glory. Now that we have that background knowledge of the way a goat eats, we can get into the fun topic of how humans have made use of the goat digestive tract.
Goats have narrow mouths and because of this can be selective in what they eat. They are classified as grazers picking out certain leaves, grasses and coarse plant material to eat, as opposed to browsers like cattle and sheep that have wider mouths and tend to shuffle their noses along the ground, eating grass without discretion.
Even though goats have the potential to be picky eaters, they’re not. While many goats have a favorite food, most plant materials look appealing to goats. On production farms, the feed that goats get centers around high energy cash crops: hay, alfalfa, soybeans, etc. But in some operations, goat owners have taken advantage of goats wide appetite to feed the goats in a way that benefits both landscape and goat.
I have seen one example of this when I worked at Piney Mt. Orchard, where farmer Megan Rulli’s goats were periodically moved to areas on the farm that had large amounts of brush material. She could have taken these problem plants with a tractor, but as a treat for the goats and a more time efficient solution she instead used a movable electric fence to temporarily relocate the goats. The result was a change in scenery and a tasty snack for the goats, and a large swath of usable land for Megan.
Source: reec.illinois.edu
Source: grassoutlet.com
Source: vetstreet.com
One entrepreneur that noticed the goats’ ability to clear land had a revolutionary idea: rent out the goats as a kind of living lawnmower. This idea has had varying success across regions, but a few companies, like “Rent a Goat” seem to have sticking power. You can even go on Amazon to find a goat renting service near you (here). These companies generally operate by sending a representative out to the property of an interested landowner, negotiating price for the area and work to be done, and supplying goats and goat care to clear the land. The suggested average is four fully grown goats per acre.
Once they are there, the goats will eat almost anything; they’ll take out the local poison ivy population and trim the grass down to a manageable length.
Goats as an alternative to mechanized lawnmowers have proven themselves as an adorable, affordable, and “green” solution to clearing land. There are some problems that arise with using goats as landscaping tools, though. One is that the prescence of high toxicity weeds, such as nightshade (which goats generally know not to eat), and/or herbicide residue could pose a health problem to the goats. They also will need a supplement of nutrients and minerals to keep optimal health, especially if the landscape in question is completely or mostly just grass. The last challenge that arrives from using goats as lawnmowers is purely ascetic: goats have no desire to make sure your lawn is pretty, and will leave chunks of a plant behind if they don’t fancy it and will paw at the ground to make soft dirt beds for themselves. Sometimes using a mix of breeds in your landscaping herd, in hopes that one type of goat will eat what another might reject, can lessen this problem.
Goats make fun and efficient landscapers. If you have goats, and you also have a weed or brush problem, it’s a good idea to get help from your goat friends! If you don’t have goats but want some for a day or week to clear your landscape, there are goats available!
Source: modernfarmer.com
One word of caution: goats are incredibly intelligent and playful animals. If you want them to trim the grass in your sculpture garden or solar panel field, be wary of jumping goats.
Often, in comics and on TV, we see the goat as the ornery farm animal that enjoys eating, and will eat anything! There’s a common image in our minds of a goat chewing on a tin can, but walking near a goat pen you would never see that. The myth of goats eating tin cans actually started when a goat was trying to taste a bit of the past from a can’s label.
So if not cans, what do goats eat and why?
While goats may not be the avid tin recyclers we dream of (due to lack of an ability to digest metal), they are specially equipped to eat many foods that we humans couldn’t dream of eating. Their design makes them perfect for foraging for high-fiber, high-energy foods.
Goats fall into a category of animals called “ruminants”. They’re in good company: cows, sheep, and deer are also ruminants. These animals are cud-chewing and cloven hooved, and thus part of the exclusive group of animals God told Moses on Mt. Sinai were clean to eat. This distinction is shaping diets still today in kosher foods. The bigger biological distinction for this group, however, is their four-chambered stomach.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.
“Wow! Four chambers! That seems… excessive.”
But wait! These animals really do need and use all four chambers for the food that they eat. Each chamber has a special design and function.
When food first enters a goat, it will enter through the mouth. This may seem too obvious to put down in words, but it really is an important step in the digestive tract because of the physical and chemical breakdown that happens with chewing and saliva.
Next, the food travels through the esophagus to the rumen. Here’s where it gets interesting.
The rumen is the largest “stomach” a goat has, and can actually hold from three to six gallons of material. This gut is filled with many bacteria that break down the cellulose in the food eaten into volatile fatty acids, which are then absorbed by the rumen wall and used by the goat. Goats’ bacteria friends in their rumens are the reason that they can eat high fiber forages, and why they obtain nearly 80% of their diets energy from activity in the rumen. Goats will periodically “cough up” material from the rumen to rechew as a cud, called rumination, as part of the digestive process.
The reticulum is commonly used as tripe
The next step in the digestive tract is the reticulum. It lies in front of and below the rumen, and serves as a catch for any heavy pieces in the food. It’s honeycombed lining allows it to hold trash that might have gotten swallowed, so that it doesn’t continue down the system.
After the reticulum is the omasum. This organ in distinctively built with long folds, so that it can absorb excess moisture and leftover volatile fatty acids.
From there, food moves to the abomasum. This organ is the closest to a human stomach out of the four. It contains hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes, which further break down food particles before the material enters the intestines.
In the intestines, the function of the organs is similar to that of human intestines. There is final liquid and nutrition absorption before excretion.
Now, when someone hits you with that fun fact, “cows have four stomachs,” give it right back to them with “goats do too!”
Goat is not an uncommon food across the globe. Goats are generally thought of as a practical and tasty source of protein, but more so in some counties than others. One problem with assessing goat consumptions is that often the statistics taken for goat consumption are recorded in a broader category of “goat and sheep” consumption, which leads to a skewed view of who is actually consuming goat.
But the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization Statistic (FOASTAT) does have numbers for goat production and amount, which I’ll just leave here:
The U.S. is not even close to the top of the list. Culturally and dietarily, goat meat is of little importance in the United States. In fact, worldwide, goat meat accounts for only 2% of meat consumed. For many countries and regions goat meat has little to no place in everyday life. But for some countries, it is an integral part od the diet and culture.
Goat Density of the World Source: Gridded Livestock of the World
Nigeria is one of the countries that use goat meat in its cuisine regularly. One breed of goat that originated in West Africa is even called the Nigerian Dwarf Goat, prized for its small size and efficiency and lends itself to meat and dairy production. The first time I ate goat meat, it can be attributed to Nigerian cuisine. Last year my English class read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a novel that is set in Nigeria. For a group project a few of my friends and I were in charge of leading a class discussion on food and holidays and their role in the novel. Knowing that I love goats, my friend Forest requested the permission of my teacher to bring in a Nigerian food dish to share with the class and spark discussion.
Needless to say, he brought in a goat stew that he knew I would be socially obligated to try. I did, and I’ll be the first to admit it was delicious. For although in my head goats are untouchable and adorable, akin to dogs, in reality it is important to recognize their place in the world as an important source of food and a working animal.
Pepper Soup (Ukodo) Source: Dobby’s Signature
In Nigerian cuisine, goats are often used as a stew or soup component or roasted. One famously flavorful dish is pepper soup, which can have goat meat in it and can even make use of the liver and intestine for flavoring.
If you read my blog post here, you’ll find some of the reasons goat meat is on the upward trend in the United States, though it still does not have a big presence. One new source I’ve found analyzing why goat has never been a staple in the U.S. provides an interesting perspective: the best meat comes from kids when they are 6-9 months old. While this meat, often labeled on menus by its Italian translation “capretto”, is delicious, it only yields in inefficient 40 pounds of meat.
For now, if you want to be part of the popularization of goat meat in American cooking you’ll need to seek out goat in specialty, ethnic, or halal grocery store, farmers markets, and butcher shops. I encourage you to go out and find some, cook, and try it!
I’d like to start this post by showing a video (I’ll bet that many of you have already seen similar ones): “Fainting Goat? He Gone!”.
These goats are hilarious. They’ve become an Internet sensation, and can be found all over YouTube and are shared on social media sites. One video has over 23 million views, and the goats have been featured on news channels like ABC and National Geographic, as well as MTV.
They go by many names, most commonly fainting goats. The same goats can be called stiff legged goats, nervous goats, Tennessee meat goats, wooden legged goats, and more. The breed’s technical name is a myotonic goat, which refers to the genetic condition that causes the fainting sensation.
Fainting goats as a nickname and description is actually somewhat misleading. When the goats fall over, the do not lose conciseness. In fact, they are not hurt at all. The genetic disorder responsible for the leg lock-up, called myotonic congenita, is characterized by a neuromuscular malfunction. When a myotonic goat is startled or excited, the goat’s leg muscles are signaled by the brain to tense up. Normally, the leg muscles would automatically stop contracting. In the case of these goats, the muscles can take 10-15 seconds to go back to normal, which leads to them falling over. It can be triggered by surprise, such as the rapid opening of an umbrella, or excitement over breakfast. Hopefully, these goats never have to experience the shock of a predator coming to eat them, which could also trigger the frozen legs.
The way they respond to predators is closely related to why the breed might have been developed in the first place. Science would tell us that this kind of trait, e.g. falling over when you see a wolf, would lead to the quick removal of this trait from the gene pool through natural selection. But, when domestication enters the picture, the rules of selection are changed (and goats are the oldest known domesticated animals).
Source: Beastkeeper.com
One good example of this is cow spots. The first cows that humans encountered did not have black and white piebald spots like the cows you may see today. If they did, they would not blend in with the landscape and be an easy target for predators. When a mutation caused the gene to appear in a farmer’s herd, though, he likely saw the advantages of having a cow that was easy to find and bred this cow with other cows to reproduce cows with the same trait.
The theory for the development of fainting goats is that a farmer wanted these goats in his herd as a decoy for predators. If a wolf appeared the fainting goats would fall down and provide a distraction, allowing the other, more quality goats to escape.
Sad.
Today, these goats are kept for one of two main reasons: for pets and meat. Their faints are amusing, which makes them a popular choice for families that just want a couple goats as pets. They have also been bred lately to be lean and stocky, traits that lend themselves to meat goats. The International Fainting Goat Association provides guidelines for the specifics of the breed. I think that the best identifier is to go up to a goat and yell “Boo!” with spread arms and see if it falls over. Try it with the next goat you see!
BONUS FACT: Myotonic goats can’t “faint” until they are around five or six weeks old. So, this video of baby myotonic goats has no fainting (but is very cute!)
You’re lonely. You herd goats for a living. You live in the Alps. And you’re not quite sure, but you suspect that you’re actually a marionette.
source: cornel1801.com
The initial outlook is bleak in this scenario, but fear not! If you have matched all of these criteria, there is a good chance that you are actually the star of a show within a show; the most famous puppet show to ever grace American audiences’ ears and eyes with its charm.
Source: singsnap.com
I speak, of course, of “the Lonely Goatherd” from “The Sound of Music”. It is the focus of one of the beloved classic’s best scenes.
Many Americans have watched and loved “The Sound of Music”. Both the original musical and the movie adaptation have had their fair share of critics, but the film’s position as the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time (adjusting for inflation) and the story’s tight grip on the hearts of everyone who watched it first as a child cannot be denied. Heck, even ”Gossip Girl’s” Nate Archibald loves the movie.
The story of the lonely goatherd is a charming edition to the musical. It tells the story of a lonely boy who yodels the days away on a mountain, caring for his goats. His song is loud, and people all across the land hear. One day, a girl in a pale pink coat hears and yodels back, sparking a love story for the ages.
The story, told through the lyrics with ample yodeling sprinkled in, progresses when the girl’s mother encourages the two. It is later hinted at that the girl is pregnant; “soon the duet will become a trio lady odl lay odl loo”.
Source: morethings.com
The narrative of the song mirrors the basic plot of “The Sound of Music”. There is a lonely man who builds his already existing family (goats/the von Trapps) with a new girl (pink coat/Maria) who was pushed his way by her mother (goat mother/Mother Superior). The pregnancy may relate to the real events the musical is based off of, as the real Maria and Captain von Trapp had two children after their marriage in addition to the children he had from a previous marriage. The musical doesn’t follow the family long enough to see this.
It’s easy to guess why this was always my favorite part of the musical. Besides the adorable puppets, sweet story, and incredible yodeling, there are goats!
In the original stage productions, Maria sings the song during the thunderstorm to comfort the children. This was also the song placement during the widely publicized live on-screen performance of the musical in 2013 on NBC. When singing to the von Trapp children on her bed Maria has no prop goats to use, only singing.
Note: This is not NBC’s version, but it is true to the original stage musical.
In the movie adaptation, the song is sung accompanied by a puppet show as a performance for Captain von Trapp’s friends. The goats are marionettes. Maria, played by the iconic Julie Andrews, works the marionettes with the children.
After the film’s incredible success, Julie Andrews performed the song again on an opening of a “Muppet Show” episode. An amusing feature of this version of the song is that the goatherd is a goat, and ends up with Miss Piggy, who is playing the girl in the pink coat.
This song is arguably the best part of a great movie and musical, and it centers around goats. Luckily, even as the musical ages, it and this song hold a place in American hearts and is preserved in the National Film Registry.
Last week, I explored two of the apps that are offered in the Apple App Store when one types in the search query “goat”. This week I will continue my quest with a slightly different approach: my initial reactions to many goat apps. Part 2 of goat apps let’s go(at)!!
The first app I downloaded, I will admit I was biased against from the start. You’re not likely to win me over with a game like “Goat Shooter”.
The game is exactly what you might expect. Twang-y instrumental country music plays in the background as you, the farmer, shoot at goats lest you be gorged to death. The controls are simple: up and down buttons move the farmer along the right edge of the screen, and another small button shoots the gun. I was not a fan.
I was more hopeful for my second app: “Goat Pregnancy Surgery”. If you’ve read my post “Congratulations, It’s a Goat!” you know that this is a fascinating topic for me.
This game started on a good note. The beginning is just like some of my childhood favorite Barbie.com games, but you wash and primp a goat instead of horse or puppy. Then, after a medical check-up you find that the goat is pregnant and deliver the kid by tilting the screen. That’s pretty much it, but you can choose to go through the story again. So, all things considered this app is a little weird but mostly just perfect.
“MountainGoat” the app is not a game like the previous two. It’s a GPS system for hikers that has many features you can use to track your hike. The app can record length, elevation, timing, starting points, total climbs, and average speed. You can also import data from Google Maps and other sites so that you can see existing trails on the map. The user interface is simple to use and the information it offers is useful. I’ve already told my dog about it and we can’t wait to use it next time I go home and hit the trails.
“Man or Goat” is an unexpected goat game. It’s certainly not one that I would have ever thought of, but is more evidence of the public’s fascination with goat sounds (watch some of the videos here to see more). The basic premise of the game is that you guess whether the sound in your earbuds was made by a man or a goat. It’s harder than it sounds! There are also “game modes” that you can unlock when you do well with your score. Some, like “Poo Bucket”, are minigames to supplement the main game when you get a right answer. Others, such as “Beat the Shepherd”, feature challenges to complete as you play. It’s interesting to know how well you can differentiate between unordinary animal sounds.
I’ll close with one more game: “Goat Rider”. When you play this game, you play as one of one hundred seemingly random objects that are trying to stay on the goats back. As you bump into things, you unlock more possible riders and gain points. Simple, but I liked it.
There is such a variety of apps out there, even within the world of goats. It’s seemingly impossible for one person to try all of them, so download one I didn’t review and tell me about it after exploring it for yourself!
I counted to 93 apps with goat in the name from a search query in the Apple App Store before
The search results
I stopped counting. I originally thought that the number of apps devoted to goats would be small, that I could download them all and then do a short review of each. As it is, there’s no way I could go through all of them in two blog posts like I had hoped. I’ve decided instead to pick my four favorite apps from the top 20 results, and discuss those.
The first is game that I have devoted more time to than I would ever admit, lest I lose all dignity. It’s called “Goat Evolution”, and it’s weird. It’s part of a series of games made a single company that all feature the same premise of game play. Basically, when you drag two goat of the same type together, you make a mutant goat to add to your goat index. It eventually takes a pyramid of goat combinations to get to the later mutant goats.
The more mutated the goat is, the more money it makes you. Goat poo translates into coins (I warned you it was weird!), which you can use to buy goats, little goat hats, and upgrades. When you reach a certain point in the game, a little Martian man asks for a goat to do experiments on. From there, you can play the game in the exact same format on Mars as well as Earth. For some reason unbeknownst to me, this game is fun to play and there is a strange sense of achievement that comes with mutating a new type of goat.
One of the best-designed “goat” apps isn’t about goats at all. It’s all about sneakers. With the rise of the designer sneaker, there was a need for a forum to buy and sell sneakers. Both independent marketers and shoe companies can sell shoes on the app, and they can be sold as either new or used. There is a search page where one can enter terms of the search, such as size and color, and a way to save your favorite shoes onto a wish list. If you want to show your shoes off, you can connect the app to your Facebook or Instagram and contribute photos of shoes you have bought to the product page of that shoe. When you add photos, they are put on your “collection” page as an easy way to virtually keep track of your shoe closet.
The user interface is stunning. The app’s logo is a simplistic outline of a goat in black on a white background, and the tabs to buy and display shoes are easy to use. That’s coming from someone with little technological inclination, and no great love for sneakers.
From games that simulate you as a destructive goat, to a goat-named virtual shoe marketplace, there is a seemingly endless stream of varied goat apps. Next week, I’ll cover two more of the goat apps that grace the app store.
We’ve already talked about the goat’s milk dairy industry, in both the context of fresh milk and goat cheese. Both are fantastic uses for goats milk, just a step below using goat milk to actually feed baby goats! I’d like to now introduce a third use of goats milk to you: to make soap!
eating, and will eat anything! There’s a common image in our minds of a goat chewing on a tin can, but walking near a goat pen you would never see that. The myth of goats eating tin cans actually started when a goat was trying to taste a bit of the past from a can’s label.
muscles are signaled by the brain to tense up. Normally, the leg muscles would automatically stop contracting. In the case of these goats, the muscles can take 10-15 seconds to go back to normal, which leads to them falling over. It can be triggered by surprise, such as the rapid opening of an umbrella, or excitement over breakfast. Hopefully, these goats never have to experience the shock of a predator coming to eat them, which could also trigger the frozen legs.
has many features you can use to track your hike. The app can record length, elevation, timing, starting points, total climbs, and average speed. You can also import data from Google Maps and other sites so that you can see existing trails on the map. The user interface is simple to use and the information it offers is useful. I’ve already told my dog about it and we can’t wait to use it next time I go home and hit the trails.
hundred seemingly random objects that are trying to stay on the goats back. As you bump into things, you unlock more possible riders and gain points. Simple, but I liked it.
