There’s A Goat In There!

Now that the initial shock and joy of the goats’ arrivals has worn off a little, I’ve had some time to adjust and have a good look at them. Tierra is in fabulous condition, despite having a sore hoof from when Casey trimmed her before bringing her to me. Apparently she got a little over-zealous and nicked her a little, which happens from time to time. Lucy, on the other hand, is a mess! On closer inspection, I discovered her hooves are HORRIBLY overgrown and her mohair is not in nice little ringlets like Louie’s, but huge chunky dreadlocks. She’d put any Rastafarian to shame. I’ve decided to shear her, and after hacking away at her with a pair of scissors (and giving her a nice cut and having nightmares about it for 2 nights afterwards!), I decided that is just not gonna cut it. No pun intended. Instead I used Dustin’s hair trimmers (sorry honey!), which had to recharge a few hours after about 5 minutes of cutting at Lucy’s oober-thick coat. What a mess. She was a good sport about it for the first 2….DAYS! I had no idea what kind of project this would turn out to be. After 2 days of me coming at her with loud hair-pulling clippers, she learned to avoid me. That’s saying a lot, considering she’s the sweetest friendliest little thing you’ll ever meet. On about day 6 I managed to clip off the last of it from between her back legs. You wouldn’t believe what I found as I went. Whole pine needles embedded in her coat. Leaves. Stickers. She had a huge sore on her side from God knows what. Her entire underside from her chest to her bottom was a solid sheet of orange matted hair 4 inches thick in some places. In essence, her legs were pinned to her body from so much matting. You can imagine how much she enjoyed me poking around in her privates with the clippers, but it all had to go. Her bottom was a wasteland of nasty hair. Here are some pictures of the process.

In this picture you can really see how nasty her bottom was. She’s the one on the right.

If you look closely in this picture you can see that Lucy is a little more than half-sheared. This was taken on about day 4 of the shearing process. She was bright white under all that filth.


This was actually taken a few weeks after I finished shearing her, and it’s already grown back quite a bit. It was shaved all the way down to just some white fuzz over pink skin. Unfortunately I did not think to take a picture until after she’d managed to dirty herself up nicely. Oh, well.

I was able to salvage a bucket of Lucy's mohair. The rest I just threw away it was so disgusting. I plan to experiment with this batch, learn how to wash it and whatnot. Better to practice on this mess than on the quality mohair I hope to harvest from her in the spring. The washing process is fairly involved, requiring multiple washings with very hot water to remove the waxy build up. After that, it can be carded for spinners or sold as is for doll-makers. I've seen it online anywhere from $9/lb to $36/oz. Pretty big difference. It all depends on the quality of the mohair. Unfortunately, I would not know good mohair if it bit me on the butt. I still have much to learn when it comes to the Angora breed.