Birth of White Goat in Captivity. 
We are glad this week to present to our 
readers a picture of the first Rocky Mountain 
goat ever bred in captivity. This little fellow 
was born in the New York Zoological Park, 
May 20. Its parents were two of five white 
goats all born in May, 1905, captured in the 
Rocky Mountains of British Columbia north of 
Fort Steele, and brought East in November, 
1905, by Director Wm. T. Hornaday, of the 
Zoological Park. 
Previous to this, a number of goats had been 
brought to the East, but none of them had lived. 
On the other hand the little band of goats at 
the Zoological Park has done well and generally 
its members have been in excellent health. They 
are fed, as we learn, from the Zoological So¬ 
ciety's Bulletin, “upon very clean crushed oats 
(in the hull), sliced carrots and 
potatoes, an occasional apple, and 
all the clover and hay they can 
eat.” There are three males and 
two females in the original herd 
and they occupy three large pens, 
and a shelter which might be 
called a barn or stable. They 
spend much of their time and 
they are always climbing about 
over the roof of the stable. This 
exercise undoubtedly contributes 
much to their well being. 
Goats are great fighters, and 
these are so disposed to punch 
' each other with their sharp horns 
that it has been found necessary 
to saw the tips from the horns. 
The period of gestation of the 
kid just born was from Nov. 25, 
1907, to May 20, 1908, or four 
days less than six months. Ten 
minutes after birth the little kid 
was on its feet; half an hour after 
birth it was jumping about the 
stall and climbing over its mother. 
Weighed and measured two days 
after birth, it weighed 7^ pounds 
and stood \y / 2 inches high at the shoulder. It 
is a strong and hearty nursling, and it may be 
hoped that it will live long. 
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In past years Forest and Stream has had 
something to say about the white goat in cap¬ 
tivity, and one of the most interesting articles 
ever printed on the subject appeared in our issue 
of Dec. 26, 1889, from the pen of that good 
fellow and excellent field naturalist, the late 
John Fannin, of Victoria, B. C.. Of a tame 
white goat which he had he wrote as follows: 
“Some time about the 15th of May, 1881, an 
; Indian came to my house, at Burrard Inlet, with 
the request that 1 would accompany him to his 
| canoe and look at a tcnass mozvitch (small 
'animal) which he wanted to sell me. I fol- 
| lowed the old fellow down to the water and 
I stood by while he drew the thing out from the 
folds of an old blanket and stood it on the 
beach. A little bullet-shaped head surmounted 
by a pair of tiny, sharp-pointed ears, a mere 
handful of a body, propped up on four long 
and clumsy looking legs, it was certainly the 
most ungainly animal 1 had ever seen. Its coat 
was of pure white wool, very short and slightly 
curly, and with very little appearance of hair 
except in the beard, which just showed itself 
beneath the lower jaw. There was no sign of 
horns, although slight protuberances could be 
felt beneath the skin where these would come. 
It was a male, and probably not over a week 
old, and the Indian had run it down on the side 
of a mountain after shooting its mother. I gave 
the Indian his price, $2, and, picking the little 
waif up in my arms, carried it to the house. 
“For two weeks I fed it on cow’s milk, weak¬ 
ened with water, feeding it about every hour 
and allowing it only a very little milk at a time. 
Then for a day or two I added a little oatmeal to 
the milk and before long almost anything of a 
vegetable nature was eagerly gobbled up by it. It 
appeared to be always hungry, but strange to 
say it would allow no one to feed it but my¬ 
self. It soon became a little troublesome, 
though, for, no matter where I went, the goat 
followed at my heels like a dog. At meal times 
it would accompany me to the hotel and re • 
pose at my feet under the table. It would fol¬ 
low me into the woods on my short trips after 
grouse, and the report of my gun had little or 
no effect on it. If I climbed up on a stump 
and sat down for a smoke the goat would climb 
up too and sit down on its haunches by my 
side, and with its nose straight out in front, 
gazing solemnly into the gloom of the deep 
forest so long as I kept quiet, it would remain 
motionless. The chirrup of a squirrel or twitter 
of a bird failed to attract its attention in the 
slightest degree, but if I made the least motion 
to get down it was up at once and ready for a 
spring. 
“It had a great passion for high places which 
I imagine is born with the animal. When I 
first got it 1 made a bed in one corner of the 
shed by filling a low box with clean, soft hay, 
the goat standing by watching the operation. 
When it was finished, I picked him up and put 
him on the hay, pulling his legs from under him 
and making him lie down; in fact, giving him 
to understand that that was to be his bed. But 
as soon as I took my hands off him he jumped 
out of the box. At the further end of the shed, 
which was about fifteen feet long, stood a pile 
of fir bark, six feet high, corded up in the usual 
way of cording fire wood. When he jumped 
out of the box he walked over to this pile and 
stood for a moment looking up at the top of 
it. Then he backed away from 
it till within a few feet of where 
I stood, and taking a run climbed 
up that bark like a cat, and lying 
down on the top looked at me as 
much as to say, ‘This is the way 
we do in the mountains.’ From 
then till the day he died, his bed 
was always on the top of that 
bark. 
“He was an early riser, and 
long before my usual time of get¬ 
ting up he would rout me out by 
butting against the door. There 
were two domestic animals it 
could not bear the sight of—a 
cow and a dog. But while it 
would almost break its neck in 
the endeavor to get away from 
the former, the appearance of the 
latter aroused all the combative¬ 
ness of its nature. One day a 
gentleman came into my shop 
accompanied by a setter dog, 
when the goat immediately 
assumed a belligerent attitude, 
walking around the room stiff- 
legged, his little hoofs coming 
down on the floor with a loud tap at every step. 
Finally he halted at a respectful distance from 
the dog, and with his head lowered, bracing 
himself for a last effort, he seemed to be await 
ing, or about to begin, an attack. The dog sur¬ 
veyed the little creature for a moment, and 
then, probably thinking it scarcely worth both¬ 
ering with, lay down on the floor and went to 
sleep. As the dog remained motionless the 
goat relaxed its rigid attitude and moved cau 
tiously nearer, until, by stretching its neck, it 
brought its nose within an inch of that of the 
dog. Just then a fly disturbed the dog's slum¬ 
bers, and in bringing up its paw to brush away 
the insect it hit the goat a sharp tap on the 
nose. Like the recoil of a steel spring, quick 
as a flash, the goat sprang into the air, and in 
coming down and trying to alight as far away 
from the dog as possible, he got tangled up in 
the legs of a wooden chair, which, in his hurry 
CAPTIVE WHITE GOAT. 
Taken about 1870 in the Bitter Root Mountains. En’argement of carte dc visite 
photograph taken at Deer Lodge, Mont. 
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