Interesting Facts About Goat

Domesticated from around 7000 B.C, these members of Bovidae family are sometimes referred to as the ‘poor man’s cow’ for their extensive utility and affordable cost of maintenance. A major contributor to the dryland farming system to the point of being self sacrificial (pun intended), it selflessly provides us, humans, with its skin, milk, and meat. Its skin is extraordinarily soft, its meat is deliciously delightful, and it contributes to the total yearly supply of milk in the world with its share of 2%. Talk about the benefits of keeping a goat with you! Well, moving on to its personal characteristics, it has an excellent intellect and a knack of inquisitiveness to discover everything that goes and grows around. It has sensitive lips and tongue that do all the work, investigating unfamiliar items in its vicinity. If reading about this fascinating creature has awoken your inquisitory senses too, then we have a lot in store for you. The entire story of facts and figures relating to goats is bulleted in further sections. Go through them to enrich your love and knowledge for goats.

Fast Facts

Trinomial Name: Capra Aegagrus Hircus
Conservation Status: Domesticated
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Bovidae
Subfamily: Caprinae
Genus: Capra
Species: C. aegagrus
Sub Species: C. a. hircus
Average Size: 70 to 120 cm
Weight: 170 LB
Average Life Span: 15 to18 years (some live more than 20)
Diet: Herbivores (hay, grass, fruits, and leaves)
Habitat: Worldwide, exceptAntarctica (grasslands, mountain steppes, and deserts)
Age of Sexual Maturity: 3 to 15 Months
Gestation Period: 150 Days
Average Litter Size: 2 (single and triplets sometimes) 

Interesting & Fun Facts About Goat 

• Goats are one of the earliest animals to be domesticated by humans. Archaeological research hints that goats were domesticated in Zagros Mountains of Iran andIraq, some 10,000 years ago. And since twentieth century, they have gained recognition as pet animals.
• These are useful animals as their milk, meat, hair and skin is used for different purposes in most parts of the world. Also, all dairy products made of cow’s milk can be prepared using goat’s milk. Thus, it proves to be a substitute for cow’s milk for cooking purposes.
• Goats are found in nearly three hundred distinctive breeds. Female goat is known as doe or nanny, castrated male as wether, and intact male is called as buck or billie. An infant goat is known as a kid and is called so until it grows into fully formed adults.
• Meat of a young goat is called kid or cabrito and that of an adult one is called as go­at or chevon, and in some areas – mutton.
• Generally, goats have two horns whose shapes and sizes vary according to their breed. But if any one of their parents has dominant polled gene they become polled. And, although rare but polycerate goats do exist, with more than two horns, sometimes as many as eight.
• These horns are made up of living bone, rich in many proteins including keratin which they use for defence, supremacy and territoriality.
• Ruminant in nature, a goat has its stomach divided into four chambers viz. the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasums. A kid does not have a fully developed rumen but when it starts intake of solids, its capacity to absorb nutrients, as well as its size, increases.
• The udder of a female goat has two teats as compared to cattle, which has four teats.
• The pupils of a goat are horizontally slit shaped, which help make its vision clearer by increasing peripheral depth perception.
• Male as well as female goats have beard and some of the breeds also have wattles hanging from each side of their neck.
• Some of the breeds of goats do resemble that of sheep. It is the short and pointed up tail which helps differentiate the goats from the sheep, which have long tails.
• The reproductive hormones of goats, irrespective of their breed, get activated every 21 days. The duration of this activation extends from 2 hours to 48 hours.
• During this period the goat is called to be ‘in heat’. It shows the signals by lifting its tail slightly, making sounds, reduced appetite and milk production along with desire to stay close to the male goat, if present.
• Goats of equatorial regions can breed throughout the year whereas breeding in Swiss goats happens at the time when days become small. The breeding season continues till early springs.
• Goats are the browsing animals, and not grazers like sheep or cattle. They have a reputation of eating anything they find (sometimes even tin cans and cardboard boxes) to survive. Although they show reluctance for inedible food. And they rarely take contaminated water and soiled food, only if starving badly.
• Behaviourally, goats are very inquisitive in nature and explore every alien object in their territory with their prehensile upper lip and tongue. They are quite intelligent and test the fences several times for weaknesses. Once broken, they will try to flee.
• Talking about their behaviour in groups, goats are less likely to exhibit clumping. As when they find the grazing area safe, they will disperse across the grassland.
• Goats are known to have good co-ordination and are quite good climbers, able to hold the balance even in the most unstable places such as steep mountains and rocks. They can even climb trees, given that the branches and stems are inclined at some angle at ground level.
• Goats are prone to several diseases. Primarily, it is respiratory diseases like pneumonia, foot rot, internal parasites, pregnancy toxosis, and feed toxicity which they suffer from. They also get infected by viral and bacterial infections like caprine arthritis encephalitis and pseudo rabies etc.
• Goats spread infections leading to zoonotic diseases which include tuberculosis, brucellosis, Q-fever, and rabies.
• Though average life expectancy of a goat is 18 years, they can live as long as 24 years, given that they are fed with healthy diet and kept free from diseases.
• Goats can carry materials weighing up to 25-30% of their body weight. They are preferred as stock animals in most of the places due to this reason.