Bummed.....Awful Day...

Oh my! I'm so glad you all are okay. I am so sorry about Sam. This is not your fault.

If you can't find a buyer maybe you could "gift" the meat (already processed) to a needy family in your area. My family finds a charity to donate to during the holidays and maybe this would help you find some good in the whole situation.

Again, I am so sorry.

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"Don't worry what people think, they don't do it very often" ~ Unknown

I've recently read a book about genetics that had a story in it about roosters from a certain breeder who didn't know how to mate with hens, they just killed them. After researching, they figured out that breeding for quick growthy birds, some quirk of genetics bred out the knowledge of courtship behavior in the male birds. They became enraged instead of going into normal wooing behaviors, and they killed the hens instead of breeding them.

I wonder if some similar thing happened as a result of his genetics? Some chromosome is off?

Can you get to the dentist today?

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Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

So sorry Chrystal. In my experience, it has always been the alpine and alpine crosses that have gone "bad", That's why I do Saanen, Nubian and Boer now. If her were mine, I would definitely wether him before anything else. You may be able to offer his meat to a homeless shelter ...... ????
Sending quick healing prayers your way...


***NOT SAYING ALPINES ARE BAD, BUT THEY CAN GET AN ATTITUDE**** (not meaning to start a breed controversy here)

Wow! I'm so glad you're okay. I have to echo those who say not to send him through the sale though, it just seems to risky. Here I'd just take the loss and put him down. My hubby wouldn't have had to fight me on shooting him then and there I'd have gone for the gun while they were boxing.

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“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White

***btw: I have never had a bottle baby do that. I don't think you did anything that would cause him to do this.

Sorry this happened...there wouldnt of been any talking about it I would of shot him myself...Mine have never done this, and it does sound odd behavior too. Something is wrong in his brain and he cant tell you. Yep I know what I would of done. Good Luck

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Kathy McHorse
Blue Mound, Ks
KARO SUNFLOWER DAIRY GOATS
Nubians...Got to love them Ears!

Thanks everyone....... I don't think bottle raising is the issue......Tonka is bottle raised & is nothing but sweet & mellow. Sam isn't evil all the time, just has these insane moments with no apparent trigger. Then as quickly as the bad moment comes, it goes away.

Tonka is wary of him.....they used to sleep together & interact quite a bit, but now Tonka doesn't engage in any social behavior.

We had a dog once who had to be PTS........Necropsy showed a brain tumor, I guess a goat could get a tumor too, but I'm not paying to have him checked.

This morning he was leaning on the fence wanting ear scratches & that suicidal barn cat was in the pen with him rubbing on him & Sam was just as relaxed as can be........Though not long ago he tried to kill that cat.

Frogtacos, I'm about 3 hours west of the DFW metroplex. I'm leaving Friday heading to Corciscana for the holidays, but I dunno how close we'd get to each other.

I'm going to post a CL ad for him as a meat goat & see if I can find someone who will kill him here. I don't know how else to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone. I'm afraid if someone bought him for meat & saw him on his good moments, they'd think I was making it all up.

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Best Wishes,
Crystal
http://noodlevilleadventures.blogspot.com

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Wow! What a horrendous thing for you to experience and for the children to witness. So GLAD hubby was on site and rescued you.

When I take an animal to the sale barn here, I include a background / history page. The sale barn owners are honest and will pass the history page on to the buyer. I always lists the meds, procedures, and reason I'm selling. If it's aggression, I list that.

I've also directed the sale barn folks that certain animals must go for slaughter only, and they auction them off that way.

Hope you get Sam squared away, one way or another.

Any dog owners nearby that feed raw? I would call them up and offer him to them, with the rule that the goat would be dead before he left the property. Shoot him and let someone make use of the meat. He would NOT leave my property alive. If I couldn't find someone to use him, he would have been shot and disposed of. It's completely unaccetpable behavior.

Hope you get yourself taken care of. You'll just have to chalk it up to one of those freaky things you run into while working with animals and move on.

What a horrible experience! So glad it wasn't worse as it easily could have been. But if you must send him through the sale barn PLEASE wether him first. You have no way to know he wouldn't end up somewhere he could hurt or kill again.

Actually, thinking about it, I wouldn't even do that. If he's truly insane then wethering may not stop him attacking again.

I love my Hondo, but to be brutally honest, had he behaved that way, he wouldn't have lived any longer than it took for me to fetch a gun.

So so sorry this has happened. It really stinks to have invested so much time, money and emotion and have it go bad. But I really don't think you did anything wrong here at all, just something seriously wrong with the goat.

-Sonja

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Wingnut Farms
Nubian Dairy Goats
New Market, Alabama

Bottle raising had nothing to do with this. The buck that was just here to breed Ariel, since her blood test showed she was still open, was bottle raised and he is so sweet and mellow he didn't even hardly need a lead when moving him in and out of the pen.

Big Wig, our beautiful buck I wish I had back, was bottle raised and again, just the biggest sweet heart. I know plenty of people with bottle raised bucklings who never had this problem.

This is not a handling/training issue. There is something wrong in Sam's head. Are you sure you don't want to put him down and send his head in for necropsy?

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Sending his head for necropsy might not be a bad idea. Then at least you would have a better idea of whether it was someone that could be passed on to offspring.

Kitty

Oh I am so sorry. I would have to say he would not be alive if he was here. I have never heard of any goat act like that. Do you have any family that either have room in their freezer or that would eat him? I would give him to my dogs before selling him even as meat to someone. I can't even picture one of mine doing that Red has his issue when rutting but the worse hes done is tried to horn you. Which has gotten better since we took everyones advice on here. ((hugs)) again I am so sorry you had to go through this.

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brain tumor was my first thought too. or he was very badly injured as a very young kid but assume this would have been noticed?

crystal was there any problem when he was disbudded?
he needs to go in some ones freezer. or on the compost pile.
i kinda feel sorry for him because i think this is not something he is in control of his behavior.
if you have some arnica, it will help you with your injuries. hope you feel better soon.

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Susanne Stuetzler
Ain-ash-shams
Nubian Dairy Goats

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I so so terribly sorry that you guys are having to go through this awful experience. I just looked out at my own buck pen.. can't even imagine what it would be like to have one of them go *bad*....BUT... like several others have mentioned.. I too had a dog ... most breath taking Ridgeback, I'd ever been around... at the age of 2 1/2, he just snapped.. sounds a lot like Sam.. calm & loving one minute... crazed killer the next... one evening, at bedtime.. I called him and told him to get in his crate (like he had done happy/willingly since he was 8 wks old).. that night he stopped next to me.. his eyes glazed over and he lunged.. right for my throat (on his back legs he was almost 6 ft tall).. I somehow managed to get my hand over my throat... the attack only lasted a few seconds... I knee-ed him hard in the chest and he fell backward... I ready myself for another attack.. but he was his normal sweet self... looked at me like "what's wrong mom?"... got into his crate.... (I ended up with a ripped up hand and a hole, that went all the way thru... from the corner of my mouth to my chin)... next morning we have him put to sleep.. he too had a brain tumor...

again, so sorry this is happening.... be safe

susie, mo ozarks

__________________
"My darling girl, when are you going to understand that "normal" is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage."
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I would not have a bottle raised intact male, I beleive the loss of personal space respect can increase the chances of aggressive issues.
I also think Crystal was not the cause.

Nor did I say that his being bottle raised was the cause, however I did say that being bottle raised increases the incidence of attacks such as this, and that it could be a number of things. I also don't feel that a such a wide statement that bottle raising had nothing to do with is correct to say, either. Noone knows why this goat snapped, though we can suspect reasons at this time.

Here is an interesting article on the subject:

Beware of the bottle raised male orphan!
By
Joseph M. Stookey
Professor of Animal Behaviour
Western College of Veterinary Medicine
Most people have an appreciation and understanding that mature male animals (bulls, rams, stags, etc.) are potentially dangerous, but most people fail to appreciate that the most dangerous males are those that have been bottle raised. Such males become dangerous because of the fact that they have imprinted onto people; it has neither to do with how they were treated nor is it due to their genetics. Bottle raised males are simply “programmed” due to their hand rearing to one day threaten their human rivals.

How is it possible for a tame pet to turn on its caretaker or other humans? First off, all avian and mammalian neonates are born with a preprogrammed drive to imprint onto their mother. Imprinting refers to a critical period of time early in the animal’s life when it forms attachments and develops a concept of its own species’ identity. Imprinting provides animals with information about who they are and for males it determines specifically who they will find attractive when they reach sexual maturity. Only a few species like cow birds and cuckoos, that are essentially parasites in another bird’s nest,
can be reared by surrogate parents and get things “right” when they reach sexual maturity. The famous German ethologist, Konrad Lorenz demonstrated the imprinting process in goslings and ducklings and showed that in the absence of their real mothers these precocial birds would imprint onto their human care taker.

Imprinting has long lasting and important biological and psychological effects on adult sexual behaviour, which is often irreversible. Males that have been imprinted onto another species tend to court the surrogate species that raised them. For example, ram lambs that are raised on nanny goats will court and try to breed female goats when they reach sexual maturity and they show very little interest in ewes. The same pattern unfolds in birds. Some farm families have the embarrassing pet tom turkey who spends his entire life courting and pestering the family members that raised him. That is why in
captive breeding programs for endangered species like the whooping crane or the California condor the hatchlings are raised and fed by bird puppets. The human caretakers must stay hidden from the young birds in order to ensure they are properly imprinted onto the correct species and not imprinted onto humans. Fortunately young females that imprint onto the wrong species are usually not affected and will remain attracted to the courtship displays from males of their own species. That is why ewe lambs that are raised on nanny goats will breed to rams even though their surrogate mother was a goat.
The point to remember is that orphan males of most species will imprint onto their surrogate mothers and then later in life will direct their sexual behaviour towards the surrogate species. If humans become the surrogate species it creates a potentially dangerous situation. When the male reaches sexual maturity, in addition to his misdirected attraction, he will have bouts of male aggression that he will direct against his human “competition”. Male aggression is a normal part of sexual behaviour. In nearly all our livestock and wild species (horses, dogs and cats may be the exception) bottle raised intact males will show aggression towards humans when they reach sexual
maturity.

Most people mistakenly believe that dairy bulls are dangerous because of their genetics. It is true that most dairy bulls are dangerous, but it has more to do with their rearing conditions then their genetics. Most dairy bulls are hand reared in isolation which contributes to their behaviour towards humans when they become adults. Dr. Ed Price, a behaviour researcher from the University of California at Davis, has shown that Hereford bull calves raised in isolation and hand fed by humans became dangerous to people when
they reached adulthood, whereas their group raised counterparts where not mean towards people.

There are numerous examples of intact male animals that were wonderful pets as young animals, but grew up to become killers or potential killers of their human caretakers.
When I was a child one of my neighbors was forced to shoot and kill their pet whitetail buck they had bottle raised, after it had attacked them during rut. This story is not uncommon. There were 15 deer related human fatalities over a 5 year period in the United States (Langley and Hunter, 2001); many of these were likely the result of bottle
raised males. During the same time period another 142 humans were killed by cattle. Though the statistics did not state the exact circumstances, some of these fatalities were certain to have been caused by hand reared bulls. The “berserk male syndrome”, talked about in llama circles, whereby a male llama suddenly becomes aggressive towards people is not a syndrome per se, but the result of bottle raising the male llama. Even bottle raised ram lambs that seem so friendly and docile while growing up have been known to inflict severe injury onto their caretakers or an unsuspecting visitor (who turns
their back towards them) when the ram becomes mature.
What should you do with orphan newborns? The best option is to look for other lactating females in the herd or flock who may have lost their own offspring or who have additional milk. Such females can be excellent candidates provided that they can be tricked into accepting the orphan as their own. How to get a surrogate mother to accept the newborn as her own is a story in itself. However, assuming the adoption or cross fostering is successful, this offers the best possible method for rearing the orphan since a surrogate mother will likely have the right milk composition, plus she is willing to remain
"on call” for 24 hours a day.

The take home message is that newborn male orphans of deer, elk, bison, cattle, sheep,
goats and llamas should never be bottle raised or at the very least should be castrated before reaching sexual maturity in order to avoid a dangerous and potentially lethal future situation. Please spread the word.

References,
Langley, R. L. and J. L. Hunter. 2001. Occupational fatalities due to animal-related events. Wilderness
and Environ. Med. 12:168-174.
Price, E.O. and S. J. R. Wallach. 1990. Physical isolation of hand-reared Hereford bulls increases their
aggressiveness toward humans. Appl-Anim-Behav-Sci. 27:263-267

Sounds like a bad seed you need to drop the hammer on that one.

I had a doe kid I sold one time. She was a butter and sort of a terror to all but her owner.

Not as bad as that buck but she was aggressive.

As kid she was out and got kicked by a peacock and got an eye injury. It healed before she was sold.

One time I was out at the girl who bought her's place and clipping her hooves. You could work on her if the owner held her- but I noticed she still had a barely perceptible scar on that one eye.

I always wondered if that slight visual blurring that had to be there with that was responsible for her aggression.

However she also had a young son and I know he sometimes played rough with them.

I'd also be worried about rabies if you hadn't said he ate the next day. There is definitely an issue that is not in the realm of normal. So sorry you got hurt and have to go through this. I would also see if there is a state lab that will check the brain (in AL there's no charge for this unless you have to ship it), just chill it after slaughter and take to the nearest lab. Like I said, we have it here, not sure about there, but if they do it, I'd take advantage of the program.

The buck that went over a 6 foot tall fence to attack me was a dam raised buck. The buck that attacked my neighbor was a dam raised buck..... Whether they are dam raised or bottle raised has nothing to do with it. This animal just has a problem.

I honestly don't believe it's genectic..... Several of his relatives, & his sire are sane & reliable. So I don't blame his breeder or breeding.

I don't think it's rabies, and niether does my vet......Evil Sam has been popping up at random with no obvious triggers for 2 months now.

Can't afford a necropsy.

Sale barn is out, local one deals only in cattle.

CL is out.... My detailed ad was flagged & removed.

Waiting on 3 possible options.

1. A muslim man butchered for my friend earlier this year.... I left him a message.
2. A raw feeding friend of mine is interested, trying to find time & freezer space..
3. Hubby's co-worker may want him for sausage.

Until then he stays put & we locked the gate.

I can't shoot him....my ground is hard & rocky. When we burried my Dane we had to rent equipment to dig the hole. I simply can not afford to PAY for his disposal on top on the loss I'm already taking. Same reason why I can't have the vet put him down & dispose of him....Can't afford the fee.

No freezer space since my big one bit the dust & I haven't replaced it yet..Otherwise he'd be food for my Dane.

So, I wait. I offered him for free to the 3 people above, with the stipulation he was to be killed here.

Another guy may want him, but he needs me to deliver him, so I told him he'll have to pitch in for my fuel, & kill him upon arrival.

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Best Wishes,
Crystal
http://noodlevilleadventures.blogspot.com

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