Angora Goats

    For about 20 years I had a herd of Angora Goats.  When we bought our hobby farm in McBride, we suddenly found ourselves with a barn, fences, and pastures, and I thought it would be nice to put them to use by getting some sort of animals.  Being pretty soft-hearted, and knowing how attached I always got to animals, I didn’t want to get any kind of farm animal that I would have to kill to benefit from, and after doing a bit of research I came up with a probable solution--Angora Goats.

    While they are goats, they a breed for their “wool”.  They give us mohair, a luxurious fine fiber used in knitting and other textiles.  Mohair is warmer than wool, and when dyed, gives brilliant colors.  It was used for the curly white beard that Santa sported.  I think I remember that Shirley Temple’s wig was also made of mohair.

    I started out by buying a pair of the critters from a breeder who lived down near Bridge Lake, BC.  I drove down there with a friend, paid the guy and hauled the goats back in the back of my Scout (an early version of an SUV).  Once installed into their new home, they soon adapted, and eventually bred.  Both Joan and I would spend hours going out standing by the fence just watching them, even though they didn’t do anything but walk around and eat grass.  Their behavior was very passive, more like sheep than goats, who have a reputation of being pretty wild (climbing into trees, and always escaping).

    As the years progressed, so did my herd of goats.  Eventually getting to the point where I had 23 of them.  The little paddock by the barn was too small for so so many animals, so after I got home from work, I would walk them down to the field where I would herd them as they walked around feasting on all the grass down there.  Even though goats have very effective digestive systems, having so many of them meant had to have a lot of hay every year to get them through the winter.

    I was running out of room in the barn for hay and goats.  I had a lot of individual stalls for the mother goats and I always enjoyed watching them when I opened the barn door and they all scrambled for their home stalls where a bowl of oats waited for them.  Because I was running out of room, I started to sell some of the goats, and my herd began to shrink as my other goats eventually started dying of old age.

    My geriatric herd eventually got down to one lonely old goat that died in 2011.

My paintings can be seen at:  www.davidmarchant.ca