GOATS. 349 



several hundred of these animals on his ranche in Georgia. This gentleman has been 

 engaged in the Angora goat husbandry for about thirty years, and has not only found it a 

 pleasant but profitable enterprise. So valuable were the animals considered that were im 

 ported by Dr. Davis, that he readily sold their offspring at from one to three thousand dollars 

 per pair. 



Habits and General Management of Angora Goats. With respect to the 

 treatment of this subject, we shall depend largely upon information furnished us at our 

 request by Col. Robert &quot;W. Scott, of Frankfort, Kentucky, who from his experience of more than 

 twenty years in goat husbandry is fully qualified to impart valuable knowledge and sugges 

 tions relative to it. He says : 



11 In size they are superior to the native or common goat. Wethers, when fully grown 

 and fatted, will weigh from sixty to eighty pounds, live weight. A wether of my flock, two 

 years old, has weighed, when dressed, fifty-four and a half pounds, net the fore-quarters, 

 eighteen pounds; the hind-quarters, twenty-one pounds; the saddle, twelve pounds; and the 

 rendered tallow, three and a half pounds; the tallow much more in some other cases. The 

 color of pure-bred and full-blood animals is almost invariably white, though some of the 

 earliest descendants of imported animals were brown; some being gray and some black, also, 

 in their native country, varying a little, perhaps, in species or family of species. Their gay 

 and intelligent appearance, their cleanly habits, active and playful disposition, make them 

 attractive on a farm; while in their nature they are so docile that they may be raised so as 

 to be as familiar about the house and yard as the dog or the cat. Though they have great 

 curiosity and enterprise, they also have strong local attachments, and after wandering all day 

 will generally seek their usual shelter at night, especially if the weather be inclement. They 

 do not break fences, or clear them at a single bound, as most other stock do, but will pass 

 through a hole which is already made, will climb up a rail which leans at about forty-five 

 degrees, or will bound on top of, and then over, a low fence. Any good farm fence five feet 

 high, except stone fence, will keep them securely. Like other stock, they are more trouble 

 some after they have acquired roaming and breachy habits. They bear coupling, hobbling, 

 and tethering better than any other stock. In their diet they are almost omnivorous, eating 

 in winter often what they have -rejected in summer. On large farms much the greater portion 

 of their diet will consist of weeds, bushes, briers, fallen leaves, brush, etc., and they are truly 

 valuable for keeping lands clean of these. In winter, short grass and corn-fodder is all that 

 is required, even by the breeding flock, and I have never found it necessary to feed grain of 

 any kind to them at any season. A dry shelter is desirable for them, especially to the females 

 in kidding season; though my flocks of males and wethers, even after they have been shorn 

 in April, have never had any protection other than what they could obtain around a hay or 

 straw-stack. 



&quot; In breeding they are precocious, the females capable of breeding at seven months, and 

 the males of propagation still earlier. As the females carry their young only five months, it 

 is possible for them to have young within twelve months old; but I do not think it advisable 

 that either sex breed in less than twelve or eighteen months old. Generally the pure-bred 

 animals have but one at a birth ; while grade and full-blooded females will have from one to 

 five, and with reasonable care will often raise as many kids as there are mothers in the flock, 

 and often more. If the weather be pleasant, and the kids, at their birth, can once get dry, 

 and stand up and suck, they require but little attention afterwards. The mothers may some 

 times lose or leave them in large pastures, especially if they have more than one, when they 

 are very young. Like deer, they incline to leave their young, and return and suckle them at 

 intervals, during the first few days after birth. A protracted cold rain is often fatal to a kid 

 at the time of its birth; it is therefore desirable to house the females at night during the 

 period of parturition. The males should be bred to the females, so that the kids will come 

 in pleasant weather, and as simultaneous as possible, for which, and other reasons it is 



