In the Spring, I moved wethers, does, kids, and Babba Louie to temporary pasture where they waited for the oakbrush to leaf out at our project site. I stopped by morning and evening to toss a little hay and check on the herd. One day, I found one of the does bleeding from bite marks in her neck. I called the vet and one of my colleagues called the trapper. There had been a fox in that pasture before, and we were determined to catch it and kill it. The next morning, we had another doe with a big bite. The trapper redoubled his efforts, but we caught nothing. After a week, with no sign of a fox or coyote, the trapper told me, “I think it’s your burro.”
“It couldn’t be!” I told him. Everyone agreed that the bites looked like a canine had sunk its teeth into my goats. And besides, Babba Louie had lived in a pen with goats for months without incident. I was adamant, and maybe even a little rude.
But the trapper was right and I was wrong, as one of my colleagues discovered when she arrived early one morning to see Babba Louie chasing the does around the pen. Apparently, he thought horned wethers were his friends and hornless does were enemies. He was grabbing them by their necks and trying to kill them, something that is actually a problem with guard donkeys.
Kathy
P.S. Check the On Pasture Shop for items we’re adding daily!