While there are many uses for a goat including milk, wool and meat, a Powell River resident has found a rather unconventional application for two of her rambunctious ruminants.
Zoe MacBean, a dog trainer with a farm in the Kelly Creek area, has trained two of her goats as pack animals.
“There is something so easy about them,” said MacBean. “They come when they are called, pretty much, they walk on a leash, generally don’t fight with other goats, they follow you everywhere and they’re cheap for treats and you can eat the aggressive ones.”
MacBean said it was easy to convince castrated male goats—six-year-old Griffin and one-year-old Didier, still in training—to carry packs.
“Goats are really simple, easy to apply technology,” said MacBean. “You generally have to show them something once or twice before they think it’s normal.”
Although MacBean said she has used females as pack goats before, it’s not fair to ask them to carry things when they are breeding. “They can do a little in the off-season, but when they have udders it’s hard to jump over logs,” she explained.
MacBean said she learned about the practice from a book she found entitled, The Pack Goat. The book was written by John Mionczynski of Wyoming in the 1990s and promotes the use of goats as beasts of burden.
Once she saw the book, something just went “ping” she said, but it wasn’t until she moved to Powell River and was out hiking with her new baby that a real need for a pack goat arose.
“One day I was coming back from a hike to Hurtado Point when [my daughter Miranda] was about five months old and I twisted my ankle and fell,” said MacBean. “She was fine, but I had a moment sitting on the ground where I realized, if I had been stuck there overnight and…it got cold, we would have a problem.”
That experience catalyzed her drive to start training pack goats, something she had only thought about in passing before.
Miranda, now 13, has grown up around goats, caring for them and even riding them as a child. Griffin, her own personal goat, was even paid for from the proceeds of a goat-aided paper route.
According to Miranda, goats have a much nicer temperament than llamas or alpacas, and are also much easier to pick up after than dogs because their waste can be swept up without smearing—a boon if you spend any time cleaning up after animals.
“I’ve had great working relationships with dogs,” said MacBean. “But I worked really, really hard to get that [whereas] the goat just sort of says, ‘I guess you’re my flock now.’”
According to MacBean, goats have a lot to recommend them as pack animals over dogs.
“Dogs can really only carry 10 to 15 per cent of their body weight on a pack,” said MacBean. “And the big heavy dogs don’t last that long, they can’t handle the heat.”
On the other hand, goats can carry up to 25 per cent of their body weight and because they use their horns as natural radiators they last longer in hot weather.
Another added benefit of using pack goats, said MacBean, is that they find food as they go—salal, a leafy shrub native to the West Coast, is a particular favourite, along with blackberry.
Also, because goats are desert animals they require far less water than dogs. And unlike canines they are good climbers, making headway where few dogs would tread, she said.
Still, as with any animal it is good to know their limits. “Goats don’t like water, you have to be very firm with them if you want them to cross water,” said MacBean, of a recent trip with the goats to Myrtle Rocks, accessible only at low tide. “Griffin was very unimpressed with my explaining to him that I’d miscalculated the tides.”
MacBean and her pack goats have made journeys to the aforementioned Myrtle Rocks, Valentine Mountain and Skookumchuck Narrows Provincial Park so far.
People generally have a positive reaction to the goats, said MacBean, although many have trouble identifying what they are at first.
“A surprising number of people are all the way past you before they realize they are not dogs,” she said, laughing. “You can almost watch their face trying to figure out what the heck they are.
“I’ve had people asking if they are llamas or even mules,” she said of Griffin, who weighs about 200 pounds, and Didier, who is about half that. “So few people know what full-grown goats look like as they are used to the ones from petting zoos.”
And with two goats ready and willing to carry her things, MacBean said her luxurious meals rather than her goats are drawing attention.
“Part of the appeal for me is to go on a hike where you would normally just have an apple and a sandwich and be able to pull out a stove and make a meal,” she explained. “At Skookumchuck we had bagels, lox, capers as well as fresh French press coffee and cream—we had two pots of that so I shared.”
Always an animal lover, MacBean estimates she has about 11 goats, over 100 assorted chickens and turkeys, a mule and several dogs.
“I was walking with my husband and we had the baby, several dogs and a goat with us,” said MacBean. “I asked him if he expected any of this and he said, ‘Well, the goats were a bit of a surprise.’”
MacBean said she is planning a longer trip on the Sunshine Coast Trail with the goats, perhaps travelling with them via water taxi to Sarah Point and then hiking back down.
Her ultimate goal, she said, would be having two matched pairs of pack goats she could rent out for others to use. All anyone has to do to be friends with a goat, said MacBean, is eat their vegetables every now and again.
“A goat just assumes you are another goat,” she said. “It doesn’t occur to a goat that anyone would be anything but a goat.”
For more information on goats, check out Mel Edgar's latest blog post on Bits & Bobs.
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