Life With Goats: Thank Goodness for Calm Genetics
Reading Time: 2 minutes
I love calm genetics. One day, I arrived home from work, grabbed the milk buckets, and headed to the barn, as usual. Greeted the goats as I came through the door, as usual.
What wasn’t usual was finding this young LaMancha buckling in the hay feeder walkway, completely tangled in the hay string hanging from the wall. He must have jumped the gate, got into the hay feeder walkway, and, for some reason, completely entangled himself in this wad of hay string.
From the pile of berries behind him, he’d been there a good few hours. When I found him, he wasn’t yelling or choking; he wasn’t panicking. Panicking would definitely have left him strangled. He was just standing calmly, waiting for me to help him. He isn’t a friendly buckling; he’s dam raised, and I’ve spent almost zero time calming him. But he somehow knew I was there to help. He calmly stood while I untangled him, and then turned him back into the herd to find his dam.
Very grateful for calm genetics.
EMILY DIXON lives in the Ozarks of southern Missouri. She started with a hodgepodge of goats in 2000 before quickly focusing on LaMancha and Nubian dairy goats. She also kept a small commercial Boer herd for about 10 years and had a three-year stint milking a large commercial dairy herd. She now concentrates on registered LaManchas and recorded-grade dairy goats for milk and meat. She also keeps beef cows and an always-fluctuating menagerie of dogs and cats. Her passion is her family, farm, animals, and humane, compassionate dairy and meat production.
Originally posted in the October 15, 2025 digital issue of Goat Journal.
