Eutlzy turned 10 in September, and his house turned 10 in October. It was time to make some repairs, and we did so on Saturday, Nov. 17, taking advantage of unseasonable weather courtesy of global warming. We added two panels each to the lower halves of the north and east walls to cover up rotted wood, enlarged the goat door and replaced its framing and the burlap flap, and replaced a block beneath the main entrance where a lock holds the right door shut. I also moved the gate latch because something had shifted over the years, making that latch nearly impossible to pry off the U-loop, and I added screws to a vertical piece that holds the fence on to the right side of the front of Chez Eutzly. Read the rest of this entry »

After undergoing severe emotional trauma in October, Eutzly has once again found his happy goat face. Two weeks of counseling from a specialist in ruminant psychological disorders were necessary to restore the smile to that furry white face, but now Eutzly once again stands on his blocks in his pasture, eats the few remaining fall leaves and gobbles his grain.
He must have thought we abandoned him. We vacationed in Virginia and North Carolina for 13 days in October, and we took Eutzly the evening before our departure to his luxury suite at the Lexington Township Goatel. We went through the normal protracted struggle to get him into the van, having to first lift his front feet in the back of the van followed by his back feet and his colossal four-compartment-stomach cargo area. Once in he was fine and enjoyed looking out the window during the drive. But the company of goats failed to ease his distress at being abandoned, and he began making sotto voce bleats every time I left the stall.
Eutzly was disturbed, but we had a good time. We visited several sites in Virginia and stayed on the Outer Banks a week before Hurricane Sandy’s arrival. (I took some “before” photos and found some shocking “after” photos online.) I thought about Eutzly during our trip and wondered how he was, but I never expected to see him a changed goat. Read the rest of this entry »

Eutzly the goat on Aug. 23, 2012.

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My personal weather forecaster held firm for many weeks on his prediction that the early burst of March warmth was just that, an early burst, not the start of warm weather. He scoffed at farmers who wanted to plant early, against the advice of insurance companies that declared they would not cover crops planted before a certain date. And he was right. Just last week we had to cover our new blueberry bushes with tarps to protect them from possible frost because the summer-like week in March caused them to blossom too soon. Read the rest of this entry »

That hay is too green, I thought, as I unloaded it from the van last week. It looks like pure alfalfa, which is too rich for a male goat and can cause urinary tract problems. But it was too late to return it that day, so I stacked it in the goat house, and its rich hay fragrance probably teased Eutzly all day, separated as it was by a wooden divider from the stall.
That evening the possibility of pure alfalfa clogging Eutzly’s urinary tract filled my mind with worries of a sick goat, and the next day I called Farmer Larry and he confirmed the hay was pure alfalfa. So the next problem was finding the time to exchange the alfalfa for male goat hay. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had my goat for 8 1/2 years, but I couldn’t answer a recent question from my friend Laura S.: Do goats move their ears independently of one another, as a horse does? So last week I watched Eutzly, and I saw that he moved his ears both independently and in concert. Goats move their ears as cats do, tilting them forward to gather sound and laying them back when sticking their snout in a bush to eat. But when he stands around, Eutzly often moves one ear while the other stays still, sometimes following a second later. Now I know.

I sat with Eutzly in the shade today and wrote my journal. I hooked Eutzly’s 10-foot lead to a post next to a pine tree so he could browse among the undergrowth, and I could have sat on the patio under the gazebo, but Eutzly kept looking for me, so I moved a chair and table from the gazebo to the grass. Eutzly divided his time between standing near me and under the tree to eat weeds, and he sniffed around when I opened a tub of pineapple and strawberries, but he was not interested in those fruits. When I brought out a bag of Fritos, however, he danced back and forth, sniffing the air, and he stuck his nose in my face as I ate, and I dropped chips on purpose, which Eutzly gobbled with glee. I reached my sodium limit and closed the package, but Eutzly strained at his lead, trying to reach the bag, so I took the Fritos inside. I told him that I must limit my Fritos intake for sodium purposes and he must limit his intake because too much corn could make him explode. Eutzly quickly forgot about the Fritos, I thought, until I noticed that he kept sniffing the grass at my feet where a few chips had fallen.  After the food was gone, Eutzly entertained himself by chewing on my clipboard and trying to eat my journal paper, and he backed up to my side for fur-scratching. I could have sat under the gazebo, but goat and I were much happier sitting together on a warm May day.

While Eutzly eats rose of Sharon, you can observe his teeth. A goat has teeth top and bottom in the back but only on the bottom up front. The upper palate is quite hard and serves well for most eating. When Eutzly can’t bite off a piece of carrot or a stick with his front teeth, he shifts the food to his rear teeth. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Eutzly is still eating. Eating is a goat’s occupation. If you look at his eye, you can see the rectangular pupil. When the pupil dilates in low light it’s round, but in bright light it’s rectangular.

Eutzly loves berry leaves, and he pushes his nose as far as possible through his fence, trying to reach the raspberry leaves that border the fold. He has trimmed everything within reach and would love to reach the others. He’ll be deliriously happy when we prune the bushes.