Photo 1. Yesterday morning the goat gang (including the adolescent feral billies that seem to have attached themselves) and Baby Sheep rushed home to take refuge in the car shed after 5mm. We ended up with another 14mm by dark, but no rain today so they were all out and about.
Photo 2. Today I remembered why I really loathe billy goat behaviour. The feral billies were chasing Betty Lou’s kid around mercilessly. Her kid is under 3 months old. She was trying to stay with her mother and hadn’t figured out that the best thing she could do is hide under a log or bush. Bigger billies, with longer horns will use them to rake nannies out of hiding but these ones don’t have much horn yet. They are incredibly single minded when they’ve got sex on the brain though, and the dogs and I trying to separate them wasn’t working. They would just brush past me in pursuit. Eventually, after some reasonably accurate stick throwing, I got them apart (photo 3) and Betty Lou and her kid stopped running for a while. I didn’t think her kid would be big enough breed for at least another couple of months but obviously the billies don’t agree.
In a society that often regards animals through rose coloured, Disney glasses, billy goats are here to remind us that there are arseholes everywhere!