Louise was donated to Bede's World in 1998. Before she came here she lived
on a city farm attached to a special needs school, where she taught many
children how to look after animals. We don't know how old she is, but she is
a mature adult. You can tell this by looking at her teeth as well as by her
general appearance.
She is an adult Saanen nanny (female) goat. The Saanen is a bred from
Switzerland in the Saanen valley, with white or cream-coloured coats. They
are very popular as dairy goats, because they are good milkers, and Louise
gets milked in the morning when she is having breakfast, usually giving us a
couple of litres a day. The milk is very useful when we have orphan lambs to
feed. Goat's milk is easily digested and can be used by those with a milk
allergy as a substitute for cow's milk. Puppies, kittens, piglets and other
baby animals thrive on goat's milk. Although it is usually necessary to put
a goat "in kid" every few years to keep it producing milk, Louise is
obviously from good dairy stock as she just keeps milking, every day of the
year. Perhaps we should start making goat's cheese as a demonstration!
Louise can be distinguished from her friend Bluey II because she is white
and Bluey is golden-coloured. If you look under her chin you will see that
she has a pair of "tassels" (also known as "toggles"). These appear on both
male and female goats. Not all goats have them and it is not know what their
original purpose was or why some goat have them - they are just hollow
gristle covered with hair.
Louise eats grass, hay and goat mix (a cereal feed) and likes nibbling on
young trees, thistles and bushes when she gets the chance. Goats are useful
for clearing rough ground, as long as you keep them away from trees!
However, it is not true that they will eat anything. They are inquisitive
animals and you will often see them nibbling at things, but they are
actually very selective about what they eat.
Goats in the Anglo-Saxon period were smaller and hairier than Louise, and
looked rather like the feral goats that you still see in some parts of the
North. They would have been horned, and would have given less milk than our
goats. It is difficult to distinguish goat from sheep bones when they are
found on an archeological dig as they look very similar. However, it seems
that on the whole sheep were kept in larger numbers than goats - sheep's
wool was useful for clothing. Louise has a short hairy coat, thicker in
winter, ands she moults (sheds her winter coat) in late spring, looking
quite bald until her new coat comes through.
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