Honey
Meet Honey the Goat Honey came to Where Pigs Fly when her previous owner could
At the sanctuary, our rescue goats are notoriously friendly and curious. Like pet dogs they wag their tails, respond to their names and form strong bonds with peers and people.
As much as any farmed animal, goats display the ability to understand and respond to human communication using eye contact, gestures, and body language—traits they likely developed over thousands of years evolving alongside human populations.
Although goats are not as commonly incarcerated and slaughtered as are other farmed animals, worldwide millions are needlessly processed into food and fabric. We provide sanctuary to many different breeds of domestic goats, allowing them the freedom to graze, socialise and play. Our visitors are genuinely moved by the inquisitiveness and playfulness of these merry pranksters, who are always eager to greet guests in the hopes of receiving a scratch or a tasty snack.
Goats can understand how other goats are feeling just from the sound of their voice.
Goats seek help from their goat herd when they can’t solve a problem on their own.
As well as paddock shelters where they can retreat during wilder weather, our goats have large spacious areas in which to play and explore.
Just like our companion animals, farmed animals need fun things to keep them occupied too. At our sanctuary, they have rocks to clamber on, wooded areas to browse through and paddocks to play in.
We carry out regular health checks to spot and treat any problems that may arise within the herd as quickly as possible.
In all three industries, playful, intelligent goats routinely suffer inhumane treatment throughout their lives and are often slaughtered for human consumption.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Newborn goats are taken from their mothers immediately after birth, ensuring that their mother’s milk can be used for human consumption. As with dairy cows, males are less valuable to farmers who prefer females for the profitability of their milk. Those males who are kept to be sold for meat are “wethered” or castrated, sometimes with a blade and sometimes by constricting blood flow to the testes by strangulating the scrotum with a rubber ring with no painkillers or sedation. This is illegal if done to a companion animal.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Female kids are raised on artificial formula and artificially impregnated as soon as possible to produce milk. A dairy goat will typically produce 1 to 3 litres of milk each day—about 7,000 litres over a 10-year lifetime.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
One reason for small herd size is goats’ relative susceptibility to parasites, making them poor candidates for the feedlot-fattening practices used with cows. Still, only around half of goat-meat farmers in a 2009 national study were familiar with some of the most common “economically important” diseases in goats, and just over a third had consulted a veterinarian about their goats in the preceding year.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Mohair yarns and fabrics most often come from the hair of the Angora goat. When still young, goat kids kept for this purpose are typically “disbudded”—a painful and stressful procedure where the buds of the goat’s horns are removed using a hot iron with no pain killers or sedation.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur
Most of the world’s cashmere production comes from flocks kept in the mountains of China and Mongolia. As worldwide demand has increased, goats have frozen to death after being shorn midwinter to meet market demand.
