San Clemente Island Goats
Our adventure into goats started with an interest in a critical breed, defined by The Livestock Conservancy, San Clemente Island (SCI) goats. SCI goats are a medium sized goat good for clearing brush.
Goat Crate
Goats are useful because they clear brush, eat weeds, and their poop is fantastic for feeding soil and plants. Since they are herd animals we started with three so that they could keep each other company.
Moving Kids In
Our adventure into goats started with an interest in a critical breed, defined by The Livestock Conservancy, San Clemente Island (SCI) goats. We found Julie Murray from Mac Brin Farms on Facebook. She’s been raising SCI goats for the last 10 years and was located not too far from us in New York.
Understanding goats are herd animals, we purchased three kids; two wethers, and a doe. The boys are Rio and Savo, and our lady is Barcelona.
Bringing the goats home was like the scene from Tommy Boy when the dead deer placed in the back seat of the convertible realizes it’s not dead anymore. That’s how it went down getting the boys out of the back of the Subaru and into the barn.
Barcelona was in a dog crate. No issues with her transportation.
Our other dog crate was too big to fit into the back of the car. The boys were just sort of hanging out back there on the ride home to Vermont with a piece of cardboard as a divider between them and the rest of the car. Ryan was correct about driving the car into the back field behind the goat barn. We only had to chase one of them slightly to get him in the barn.
By mid-March 2023, they’ll have been here for a year. They’ve mostly been used to clear brush and spread goat poop around perennial plantings and throughout garden paths.
The goats are mostly feral. I hesitate to say they have names. Although they are named, with the exceptions of Barcelona who grew into the largest of the three goats and seems to bully the other two, I don’t really know with any level of confidence who is Rio and who is Savo. I think Ryan decided the red one is Rio.
Do you see a red one?
