My Pet Goat Trixie

I remember being about 15 and pestering the life out of my family to let me get a pet goat. We lived in a farmhouse and had two unused stables, plus a paddock, so there seemed little reason not to get one. After many weeks of saying no, they finally relented, and the breed I chose was the British Saanen, (one of the largest of all Goats).

We finally found a local breeder who had a young goat to sell. She had a proper pedigree, and was called "Chantellaine Trixie". I fell for her on sight, and we ended up having her delivered the next day.

As soon as she arrived I had prepared her a lovely deep straw bed, a bucket of water and some goat mix. Okay, so on her first night she ate all of her bed, but that is life with a goat, and I soon solved the problem by providing her with as much hay as she could eat.

I quickly realised life with Trixie was never going to be dull. She was still a maiden (virgin), and yet in spite of this was producing a small amount of milk. The problem with this was that she hated being milked, and as I was the only one in the house who knew how to milk a goat, it usually meant at least one other person holding one of her legs in the air until the job was done. If no-one else was available I would have to wrestle with her on my own, and more often than not her hoof would end up in the milk bucket and ruin the milk. Truly a battle of wills was taking place, and she was winning.

To try and increase her milk yield we sent her back to the original breeder to mate her with his Billy Goat. She took one look at this hairy monster, said 'no thank you' and refused to let him anywhere near her. This was kind of the end of our dreams of producing goats milk at home and she quickly became a pet instead, still only producing half a cupful of milk or so a day.

What you need to know is that British Saanen goats are very big and very strong. Trixie rapidly learned she was far stronger than me with my skinny little frame, and promptly used to drag me off into hedges and bushes whenever I was trying to walk her out to her paddock. Her preferred foods were usually our shrubs and roses, so it was a really difficult task to prise her away from these once she had hauled me over to them. In the end my Mum came up with a great idea, how about using a pair of my old infant school knickers as a blindfold, (you know, the navy blue ones with the elasticated legs, God only knows why my Mum had still kept them!). They were perfect, as her ears poked through each leg hole and she couldn't see where she was going. We could then guide her slightly staggering body out to the paddock and attach her to her tether, remove the knickers, and leave her for the day without a problem.

We thought this was the end of our problems, but it wasn't. I had read that goats should be taken for walks so they could graze the hedgerows. This began with me taking her out on her collar and lead, at which point I found out she really hated dogs, (apart from ours). On about the second occasion I took her out she spotted a lovely black and white Border Collie wandering through the country lanes. Immediately she took off after it, scaring the poor dog half to death. I had no chance of stopping her, and got trawled along behind her like some kind of out of control water skier. Eventually I lost my grip on her lead, and as the terrified dog finally reached it's home and thought it was safe in it's own garden, Trixie tore in after it. The owner of the dog was on his roof fixing a tile, and to be quite honest he nearly fell off the roof laughing. It must have looked very funny in hindsight, first his dog comes streaking around the corner at full pelt, closely followed by a large white goat, closely followed by an out of breath, and very embarrassed me. Luckily he did see the funny side as I blushingly apologised and hauled Trixie off home again.

Having decided a collar wasn't working we got her a halter instead. This would surely solve the problem we thought. Nope, Trixie quickly worked out exactly what angle she needed to hold her head at so that she had maximum strength, and so her walks had to cease, but not before she had charged into the surprised neighbour's garden a few times in the middle of family barbeque's etc, and usually eaten half of his rose bush and traumatised his dog too, all before I caught up with her.

Trixie truly had the sweetest personality though, and I would often go and sit in the paddock with her to read a book. She would always come up to me and sit down so that she could lean against my back. She knew I fed her, cleaned her, milked her, clipped her hooves, and generally did everything for her, and so she trusted me, even if she was a very naughty goat. I soon understood what every type of bleat meant, be it the gentle one that she gave me when I opened the back door at night, her way of saying 'I'm here', or the slightly hysterical bleats she would give if she knew it was time for her to be brought in for her evening feed and she wanted it 'right now'!

About a year later I got my horse Dixie, and the look on Trixie's face was priceless when this huge horse came into the stable, if a goat's mouth could fall open, her's would have done. They soon became fast friends, although we did move Trixie into the neighbouring pig sty to avoid Dixie squashing her by accident.

Sadly a couple of years later I sold my horse and decided to leave Guernsey. My Mum kept Trixie the goat on as a pet, and even got her a companion of the same breed called Dolly. At some point Mum thought she had found a perfect home for both of these goats to go to, and the lady was truly lovely. However, the tragedy was that Dolly contracted a horrible disease after this lady adopted them, and subsequently had to be put down after a long painful illness. Not wanting to see Trixie go through the same suffering, and as she was already starting to show symptoms of the same illness, the lady opted to have her put down too. This was a very sad time for Mum and I when we found out, as we will never forget the amazing character Trixie had always shown and the humorous memories she left us with.