Goat (Capra hircus): Facts, Breeds, Behavior and Diet

What is a goat and where does it come from?

Goats belong to the subfamily Caprinae, the “goat-antelopes”, which also includes sheep, ibex, chamois and musk oxen. All true goats are placed in the genus Capra. The domestic goat’s wild ancestor is the wild goat or bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus), a nimble cliff-dweller that still lives in the mountains of Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran and Pakistan. Some scientists treat the domestic goat as a subspecies, Capra aegagrus hircus, so both names are in use.

The oldest clear evidence of herding comes from Ganj Dareh in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. There, archaeologists Melinda Zeder and Brian Hesse found that people were selectively culling young males about 10,000 years ago, a sign of managed herds rather than hunting. Genetic studies agree that goats were domesticated in this broad region, then spread with early farmers into Europe, Africa and South Asia.

The wild ancestor is now listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN, because of poaching, habitat loss and competition with livestock. The domestic goat itself, like other farm animals, is not assessed and is classed here as Domesticated.

The North American mountain goat is not a true goat. It belongs to a separate genus, Oreamnos, and is more closely related to the chamois of Europe.

Appearance

Goats are lean, agile animals with a straight back, a short tail that usually points upward and hooves split into two toes. Most breeds have horns in both sexes. The horns are made of a living bone core covered by a sheath of keratin, the same protein found in fingernails, and they keep growing throughout life. Bucks often grow long, backward-sweeping or twisted horns, while does carry smaller ones.

Many goats, both male and female, have a beard. Some also have wattles, small hairy tags of skin that hang from the throat and have no known purpose. Coat color ranges from white and cream to black, brown, red, gray and spotted mixtures. Most goats have straight, coarse hair over a soft undercoat, but Angora goats grow long, curly locks of mohair, and cashmere goats produce an ultra-fine winter down.

A goat’s eyes are set on the sides of the head and have horizontal, rectangular pupils. This pupil shape gives a wide panoramic view of the ground around the animal and is explained in Why do goats have rectangular pupils?.

How big is a goat?

Size depends heavily on breed. Miniature breeds are small enough to stand below an adult’s knee, while big meat and dairy bucks can outweigh a person.

Bucks are larger than does in every breed. Large-framed goats also mature more slowly, reaching full weight at around three years, while small breeds are fully grown at roughly 18 months to two years.

Habitat and range

Goats were bred in dry, rocky hill country, and they still thrive in places that are too steep, dry or scrubby for cattle. Almost every country keeps goats, from the deserts of the Sahel to the Himalaya, the Andes and the farms of Europe and North America. FAO figures give a world population of more than 1.1 billion, with India, China and Nigeria holding the largest herds. Most goats live in Asia and Africa, where they are a vital source of milk and meat for small farmers.

Goats easily return to the wild. Feral goats roam rugged hills in Britain and Ireland, including Snowdonia in Wales and parts of the Scottish Highlands, and very large feral populations live in Australia and New Zealand. On islands without large predators, feral goats can strip native vegetation. In the Galápagos Islands, conservation projects removed well over 100,000 goats in the 1990s and 2000s to save native plants and the giant tortoises that depend on them.

Diet and feeding

Goats are herbivores, but unlike cattle and sheep, which mainly graze grass, goats are mostly browsers. They prefer leaves, buds, twigs, bark, shrubs, vines and broad-leaved weeds, and will stand on their hind legs to reach higher branches. A goat’s narrow muzzle and mobile upper lip let it pick out the most nutritious leaves among thorns.

Like all ruminants, goats have a four-chambered stomach. Food is swallowed quickly, fermented by microbes in the rumen and later brought back up as cud to be chewed again. This system lets goats live on tough, woody plants that many other animals cannot digest.

The old idea that goats eat tin cans is a myth. Goats explore objects with their lips and may nibble paper labels, cardboard or cloth, but they are actually choosy feeders that reject soiled or stale food. The full story is in Do goats really eat anything?.

Behavior and climbing

Goats are social herd animals that dislike being alone. A herd has a clear pecking order, settled by threats, shoving and head-butting contests in which two goats rear up and crash their horns together. Compared with sheep, goats are more independent: they spread out to feed rather than moving as a tight flock, and they tend to face a threat rather than flee.

Goats are also famous climbers. Their split hooves have a hard outer rim and a soft, rubbery inner pad that grips rock, and they balance easily on narrow ledges. Domestic goats regularly climb trees, most famously the argan trees of southwestern Morocco. Read more in Why do goats climb?.

Curiosity is a defining goat trait, which is one reason goats are notorious for escaping from fields. Research has found that goats can learn a two-step food puzzle and remember the solution for months, and that they look toward a person for help when a task becomes impossible. Goats communicate with bleats, and mothers and kids recognize each other’s calls. A 2012 study found that young kids develop group-specific call “accents” when raised together.

Reproduction and life cycle

Most goats from temperate regions breed in autumn, when shortening days trigger the rut, while breeds from near the equator can breed all year round. A doe is pregnant for about 150 days, or five months. Twins are the most common result, with singles and triplets also frequent, and quadruplets occasionally born.

Kids are well developed at birth and can usually stand and suckle within an hour. In the first days, many does leave their kids hidden in a sheltered spot while they feed nearby, a strategy called “lying out” that wild goats and deer also use. Kids are weaned at roughly three to six months on farms, although a wild or feral mother may nurse for longer. Females can breed from about 7–12 months old depending on breed and growth, and males become fertile even earlier.

The words for goats are worth knowing. A buck or billy is an adult male, a doe or nanny is an adult female, a kid is a young goat and a wether is a castrated male. Giving birth is called kidding.

How long do goats live?

Well-kept goats commonly live about 12–18 years, and some pass 20. Animal Diversity Web records a maximum of about 22 years. Many farm goats live much shorter lives because they are used for meat. Hard breeding can also shorten life: does that have many difficult births and bucks that lose condition during the rut often live only around 10 years.

Common goat breeds

There are several hundred goat breeds worldwide. Some of the best known in Europe and North America are:

• Saanen: a large white dairy goat from Switzerland and one of the highest milk producers.
• Alpine and Toggenburg: hardy dairy breeds from the French and Swiss Alps.
• Anglo-Nubian: a dairy goat with long, floppy ears and a Roman nose, developed in England from British, Indian and African goats.
• LaMancha: an American dairy breed with tiny “gopher” or “elf” ears.
• Boer: a heavy, red-headed meat goat developed in South Africa.
• Angora: the source of mohair, named after Ankara in Turkey.
• Pygmy and Nigerian Dwarf: small breeds descended from West African goats.
• Myotonic or “fainting” goat: an American breed with an inherited muscle condition that makes its legs stiffen for a few seconds when startled. The goats do not actually lose consciousness.

Goats and people

Goats provide about 2% of the world’s milk, but in many poorer countries goat milk, cheese and meat are everyday foods. Goat milk is made into cheeses such as French chèvre, and it is part of Greek feta, which is made mainly from sheep’s milk. Goat hair gives cashmere and mohair, and goatskin was long used for leather, water bottles and parchment.

Goats also do conservation work. Herds are hired in California and elsewhere to clear dry brush that could fuel wildfires, and to control invasive plants such as Himalayan blackberry and multiflora rose, an approach called targeted grazing.

Goats are deeply rooted in culture. In Greek myth the goat Amalthea nursed the infant Zeus, the Norse god Thor rode in a chariot pulled by two goats, and the straw Yule goat is still a Christmas symbol in Scandinavia. The word “scapegoat” comes from an ancient Israelite ritual in which a goat symbolically carried the people’s sins into the wilderness.

Myths and facts

Myth: goats eat tin cans. They nibble labels and investigate everything with their mouths, but they do not eat metal.

Myth: goats and sheep can easily interbreed. Goats have 60 chromosomes and sheep 54. Sheep-goat hybrids are extremely rare and generally infertile. The two animals are compared in the profile of the sheep.

Fact: goats are surprisingly good climbers. Domestic goats are the only ruminant livestock that regularly climb trees.