[AnAmericanMother]

If we had kept Leona, I would have had a shot at housebreaking her. She was very intelligent, and affectionate too. It may have just been cupboard love, because she lived like a pampered princess with us, but she learned to recognize the sound of my car motor (and my footsteps) and would bleat for me to 'hurry up please!'

I was warned not to keep a billy! Oddly enough the lady down the hill on the OTHER side had an old billy goat with one horn and he WAS a stinky old fellow. She kept him on a tether in the yard to eat the kudzu.

This neighborhood was in downtown Atlanta but you might as well have been somewhere out in the country in north Georgia. The area was settled by folks out of NW GA who came down to Atlanta to work in the Tull Sheet Metal factory, and they brought the country with them. We loved it!

[goat granny]

Personally I wouldn't keep a un-neutered billy as a pet, just to eliminate the smell, but they don't go into breeding mode. Some can get real cantankerous during that time....I never worried about walking into the pasture with 50 goats unless it was breeding season, then I always looked to see where my big billy was before going in...A neutered male is much like a nanny in disposition.

The will eat everything except wild mustard but you have to dig out burdock cause that can poison them. We had different pastures that could be closed off to let the timothy and alfalfa regrow..

Wild mustard looks a lot like alfalfa and I wondered how they told the difference so I chewed a piece one day, spit real quick, its very bitter... A city girl can learn real fast...:O)