# The Great Scandinavian Ridgeback Hoax



## Rex (Nov 30, 2008)

The old timers on the forum will remember about 10 years ago (maybe longer) when a new breed of goat surfaced called the Scandinavian Ridgeback. It was reported to be very rare and very large. After considerable research I finally tracked down a lady in the Midwest who was reported to be the breeder of these incrediable animals. She seemed knowledgable and said she still had a couple for sale so I had her send me some pictures. I posted them here for you to see. As you can tell, they were impressive!
[attachment=1:1a1scrz1]Ridgeback1.jpg[/attachment:1a1scrz1][attachment=2:1a1scrz1]Ridgeback2.jpg[/attachment:1a1scrz1][attachment=0:1a1scrz1]Ridgeback3.jpg[/attachment:1a1scrz1]

We had an active breeding program at the time and these goats looked like the perfect packgoats. I immediately got back on the phone with her to see about aquiring a buck and found out she was asking tens of thousands of dollars for her breeding stock. I told her that sounded really high for a goat and she got angry and told me that meat producers in Texas were paying up wards of $50,000 for her bucks. I asked for some of these Texas ranchers phone numbers so I could verify her story and she said she would send them to me. Needless to say, the phone numbers never arrived and she quit answering my calls. I posted this information to the old (I mean really old) email list we used to have and a fellow goat packer living in a nearby state stopped by her place unannounced one day and found it to be a run down fly by night farm with out a decent fence or goat in sight. Not your typical high dollar operation. I found out later that the goats in the pictures were most likely Saanen's which had been given growth hormones as youngsters and had achieved incredible size. The lady in question had tried to capitalize on their size by selling them as a new breed and commanding large amounts of money. I suspect someone may have purchased a couple which led to her seclusion to avoid giving any money back. Of course no one would admit to being taken by a crafty old woman so the Scandinavian Ridgeback goat quietly slid back into anonymity. I thought it might be fun to post the story of the great Scandinavian Ridgeback here for future reference for anyone who might be interested.

As a side note: I asked my Vet about getting some of my goats injected with growth hormones and found out that it would likely cause long term damage to them since growth hormones were meant to put on muscle fast prior to the animals sale at auction. Long term risks and health issues were largely unknown. The risk of permently damaging one of my goats was not worth it so I eventually dropped the idea and went after the perfect packgoat the old fashioned way, one breeding at a time.


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## sweetgoatmama (Dec 10, 2008)

That's a serious peice of packgoat history!! They do look like saanens on steroids. Growth hormones do bad things to horses long term.


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## McDanAx (May 24, 2010)

I contacted this lady around 1997. She sent me a packet with all kinds of info.
Her kids started at $10,000. I told her I wanted to drive from Austin,Tx to her midwest farm she started crawfishing on me.
After seeing what the ranches did with the $20,000 boer bucks, I was seriourly thinking of getting a buck. These guys turned the meat goat industry upside down with the boers. They were getting at least $1000 for every buckling. 
The area I live in is known for goat ranches. Needless to say the lady would not call me back after I said I would come get the goat to see her herd.
I am sure glad I didn't send her a check. I still have the info she sent somewhere.


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## Nanno (Aug 30, 2009)

You know, I can make my goat look enormous too, if I take a picture from ground level. It's amazing what you can do with camera angles! :lol:


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