When I was about five years old, we got “Betsy the Goat”. Vard was allergic to cow’s milk so Mom and Dad decided to get a milk goat so he would have milk to drink. They brought her home in the back of someone’s pickup. She was completely white. She had curved horns and she liked to try to butt us when we grabbed hold of them or when we twisted her tail. She was part of our family for several years.
Mom or Dad must have done the milking. Anyway, we all learned to drink goat’s milk instead of cow’s milk and I guess it helped Vard. Goat’s milk is naturally homogenized and has higher fat content than cow’s milk. We learned to like it just fine.
Betsy had at least one set of kids (baby goats) that I can remember. They were quite cute little things. We had fun playing with them. When they got a little older and had a little size on them, they were butchered and we ate them. We learned that goat meat was also pretty good.
Now, living in Heber at the time was a big brownish black billy goat. For those of you who may not have figured it out, Betsy was a “Nanny” (female) goat. The male of the species are called “Billy” goats. (See my Ag training coming through?) This particular billy goat decided to frequent our neighborhood and made frequent visits to try to see Betsy. I guess he could smell her and knew that she was a nanny goat. The problem with this billy goat was that the whole town could smell him. He gave off a vile odor that permeated a good square block around where ever he happened to be standing or laying. He tended to hang around our barn and we couldn’t stand the smell. What a smell! We tried to chase him off by yelling at him, by throwing rocks at him or by squirting him with water from the hose but we were totally unsuccessful. Dad finally had to get the owner to come and pick him up and lock him up in their barn. Dealing with him gave me a better understanding of the story of the “Three Billy Goats Gruff”’. If they were anything like him, they were pretty mean.
We had Betsy for a number of years. We used to have fun playing with her. We would grab her tail and pull it and then take off running and she would chase us and try to butt us. I remember running and jumping inside a barrel or hiding inside the garage and she would stand outside and bleat at me, waiting for me to come out. We played hide and seek together many hours and she was pretty good at finding me. When it was rodeo time, we decided that we could practice for the rodeo by trying to ride her. She always bucked us off but we thought it was great fun.
I don’t remember the details of Betsy’s departure. I think we sold her to an Indian family and they took her to the reservation. Vard was in the valley going to school so Mom and Dad decided we could go back to drinking cow’s milk. Anyway, Betsy left us and was replaced by a milk cow. The cow just never did learn how to play the same games that Betsy knew.