The goat or domestic goat ( Capra hircus) is a species of Caprinae that is mostly kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat ( C. aegagrus) of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the family Bovidae, meaning it is closely related to the sheep. It was one of the first animals to be domesticated, in Iran around 10,000 years ago.
Goats have been used for milk, Goat meat, Animal fur, and Animal skin across much of the world. Milk from goats is often turned into goat cheese. In 2022, there were more than 1.1 billion goats living in the world, of which 150 million were in India.
Goats feature in mythology, folklore, and religion in many parts of the world, including in the classical myth of Amalthea, in the goats that pulled the chariot of the Norse god Thor, in the Scandinavian Yule goat, and in Hinduism's goat-headed Daksha. In Christianity and Satanism, the devil is sometimes depicted as a goat.
Castration males are called wethers. While the words hircine and caprine both refer to anything having a goat-like quality, hircine is used most often to emphasize the distinct smell of domestic goats.
Juvenile goats are called kids, a term derived from Old Norse kið, with the same meaning. It has been a slang term for human children since the 1590s, and established as an informal term since the 1840s.
Neolithic farmers began to herd wild goats primarily for easy access to milk and meat, as well as to their dung, which was used as fuel; and their bones, hair, and sinew were used for clothing, building, and tools.Hirst, K. Kris. "The History of the Domestication of Goats". About.com. Accessed August 18, 2008. The earliest remnants of domesticated goats dating 10,000 years Before Present are found in Ganj Dareh in Iran. Goat remains have been found at archaeological sites in Jericho, Choga Mami, Djeitun, and Çayönü, dating the domestication of goats in Western Asia at between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago. DNA evidence suggests that goats were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Historically, goat hide has been used for water and wine bottles in both traveling and transporting wine for sale, and to produce parchment.
Most goats naturally have two horns, their shape and size depending on the breed. American Goat Society:Polled Genetics , americangoatsociety.com. There have been incidents of polycerate goats (having as many as eight horns), although this is a genetic rarity. Unlike cattle, goats have not been successfully bred to be reliably Polled livestock, as the genes determining sex and those determining horns are closely linked. Breeding together two genetically polled goats results in a high number of intersex individuals among the offspring, which are typically sterile. Their horns are made of living bone surrounded by keratin and other proteins, and are used for defense, dominance, territoriality, and thermoregulation. Both male and female goats may have beards, and many types of goat (most commonly dairy goats, dairy-cross Boer goat, and ) may have wattles, one dangling from each side of the neck. Frequently Asked Questions – Triple I Goats , Tripleigoats.com Goats have horizontal, slit-shaped , allowing them to see well by both night and day, and giving them a wide field of vision on either side to detect predators, while avoiding being dazzled by sunlight from above. Goats have no tear ducts.
Goats are ruminants. They have a four-chambered stomach consisting of the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum. As with other mammal ruminants, they are even-toed ungulates. The females have an udder consisting of two teats, in contrast to cattle, which have four teats.Taylor, R.E., Scientific Farm Animal Production: An Introduction to Animal Science, 6th ed, Upper Saddle River (Prentice Hall) 1998 An exception to this is the Boer goat, which sometimes may have up to eight teats. Goats are diploid with two sets of 30 chromosomes.
Bucks (uncastrated males) of Swiss and northern breeds come into rut in the fall as with the does' heat cycles. Bucks of equatorial breeds may show seasonal reduced fertility, but as with the does, are capable of breeding at all times. Rut is characterized by a decrease in appetite and obsessive interest in the does. A buck in rut displays flehmen lip curling and urinates on his forelegs and face. Sebaceous scent glands at the base of the horns add to the male goat's odor, which is important to make him attractive to the female. Some does will not mate with a buck which has had its scent glands removed.
Gestation length is approximately 150 days. Twins are the usual result, with single and multiple birth births also common. Less frequent are litters of quadruplet, quintuplet, and even sextuplet kids. Birthing, known as kidding, generally occurs uneventfully. Just before kidding, the doe will have a sunken area around the tail and hip, as well as heavy breathing. She may have a worried look, become restless and display great affection for her keeper. The mother often placentophagy, which gives her much-needed nutrients, helps stanch her bleeding, and parallels the behavior of wild herbivores, such as deer, to reduce the lure of the birth scent for predators.
Freshening (coming into milk production) usually occurs at kidding, although milk production is also relatively common in unbred doelings of dairy breeds. Milk production varies with the breed, age, quality, and diet of the doe; dairy goats generally produce between of milk per 305-day lactation. On average, a good quality dairy doe will give at least of milk per day while she is in milk. A first-time milker may produce less, or as much as , or more of milk in exceptional cases. After the lactation, the doe will "dry off", typically after she has been bred. Occasionally, goats that have not been bred and are continuously milked will continue lactation beyond the typical 305 days. Male lactation sometimes occurs in goats.
The digestive physiology of a very young kid (like the young of other ruminants) is essentially the same as that of a monogastric animal. Milk digestion begins in the abomasum, the milk having bypassed the rumen via closure of the reticuloesophageal groove during suckling. At birth, the rumen is undeveloped, but as the kid begins to consume solid feed, the rumen soon increases in size and in its capacity to absorb nutrients.
The adult size of a particular goat is a product of its breed (genetic potential) and its diet while growing (nutritional potential). As with all livestock, increased protein diets (10 to 14%) and sufficient calories during the prepuberty period yield higher growth rates and larger eventual size than lower protein rates and limited calories.Pugh, D.G. and Rankins, D. L. Jr, "Feeding and Nutrition" Sheep and Goat Medicine, 2nd Ed. Elsevier (2012) Maryland Heights, pg 40–42. Large-framed goats, with a greater skeletal size, reach mature weight at a later age (36 to 42 months) than small-framed goats (18 to 24 months) if both are fed to their full potential. Large-framed goats need more calories than small-framed goats for maintenance of daily functions.Taylor, R.E. and Field, T.G., "Growth and Development" Scientific Farm Animal Production: An Introduction to Animal Science, 6th Ed. Prentice-Hall (1999) Upper Saddle River pg 324–325.
Life expectancy for goats is between 15 and 18 years. An instance of a goat reaching the age of 24 has been reported. Several factors can reduce this average expectancy; problems during kidding can lower a doe's expected life span to 10 or 11, and stresses of going into rut can lower a buck's expected life span to eight to 10 years.
In Africa and the Middle East, goats are typically run in flocks with sheep. This maximizes the production per acre, as goats and sheep prefer different food plants. Multiple types of goat-raising are found in Ethiopia, where four main types have been identified: pastured in annual crop systems, in perennial crop systems, with cattle, and in arid areas, under pastoral (nomadic) herding systems. In all four systems, however, goats were typically kept in extensive systems, with few purchased inputs.
In Nigeria and in parts of Latin America, some goats are allowed to wander the homestead or village, while others are kept penned and fed in a 'cut-and-carry' system. This involves cutting grasses, maize or cane for feed rather than allowing the animal access to the field. The system is well suited for crops like maize that are sensitive to trampling.
Goats are similar to deer with regard to nutrition and need a wide range of food, including things like hay, grain feed or pelleted grain mix, and loose minerals. Goats generally either inherit certain feeding preferences or learn them after birth.
In Norse mythology, the god of thunder, Thor, has a chariot that is pulled by the goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr At night when he sets up camp, Thor eats the meat of the goats, but takes care that all bones remain whole. Then he wraps the remains up, and in the morning, the goats always come back to life to pull the chariot. When a farmer's son who is invited to share the meal breaks one of the goats' leg bones to suck the marrow, the animal's leg remains broken in the morning, and the boy is forced to serve Thor as a servant to compensate for the damage. Possibly related, the Yule goat ( Julbocken) is a Christmas tradition. It originally denoted the goat that was slaughtered around Yule, now more often a goat figure made out of straw. It is used for the custom of going door-to-door singing carols and getting food and drinks in return, often fruit, cakes and sweets. The Gävle goat is a giant version of the yule goat, erected every year in the Swedish city of Gävle. In Finland the tradition of Nuutinpäivä—St. Knut's Day, January 13—involves young men dressed as goats (Finnish: Nuuttipukki) who visit houses. Usually the dress was an inverted fur jacket, a leather or birch bark mask, and horns. Unlike the analogous Santa Claus, Nuuttipukki was a scary character (cf. Krampus). The men dressed as Nuuttipukki wandered from house to house, came in, and typically demanded food from the household and especially leftover alcohol. In Finland the Nuuttipukki tradition is kept alive in areas of Satakunta, Southwest Finland and Ostrobothnia. Nowadays the character is usually played by children and involves a happy encounter.
The goat is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac.Huang, Wen. "Year of the Sheep, Goat or Ram?" Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2003. Several mythological hybrid creatures contain goat parts, including the Chimera.Peck, "Chimaera" . The Capricornus constellation sign in the Western zodiac is usually depicted as a goat with a fish's tail. and are mythological creatures with human bodies and goats' legs. The lustful Greek god Pan similarly has the upper body of a man and the horns and lower body of a goat.
In Hinduism, Daksha, one of the prajapati, is sometimes depicted with the head of a male goat. A legend states that Daksha failed to invite Shiva to a sacrifice; Shiva beheaded Daksha, but when asked by Vishnu, restored Daksha to life with the head of a goat.
Goats are mentioned many times in the Bible. Their importance in ancient Israel is indicated by the seven different Hebrew and three Greek terms used in the Bible. A goat is considered a "clean" animal by Kosher and a kid was slaughtered for an honored guest. It was also acceptable for some kinds of sacrifices. Goat-hair curtains were used in the tent that contained the tabernacle (Exodus 25:4). Its horns can be used instead of sheep's horn to make a shofar.Chusid, Michael T. Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn , 2009. Hearingshofar.com On Yom Kippur, the festival of the Day of Atonement, two goats were chosen and lots were drawn for them. One was sacrificed and the other allowed to escape into the wilderness, symbolically carrying with it the sins of the community. From this comes the word "scapegoat". The devil is sometimes depicted, like Baphomet, as a goat, making the animal a significant symbol throughout Satanism. The inverted pentagram of Satanism is sometimes depicted with a goat's head of Baphomet, which originated from the Church of Satan.
Biology
Description
Comparison with sheep
Behavior and ecology
Reproduction
Diet
Diseases and life expectancy
Agriculture
Husbandry
Worldwide population
Feral goats
Uses
Meat
Milk, butter, and cheese
Mohair and cashmere wool
Land clearing
Medical training
Pets
In culture
See also
External links
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