# Getting a goat to SHUSH!



## Abra (Aug 11, 2012)

OMGoatness! My yearling FF is insane!
Hope is 1/2 Oberhasli, and 1/2 Nubian....
She was completely quiet before kidding, just a little baa here and there, and it was really quiet, and really cute, but now, every time she sees anyone, ANYONE, she screams like she is being skinned alive! We are in a residential neighborhood, on one-acre lots, and she is going to make my neighbors mad!!! They are going to file complaints, and I am going to have to get rid of my babies!!!
We had to take her kids away within hours after birth, because I have no room (they would have been squished!), and, because I gifted her daughter to my best friend, and the buckling is going to be our meat goat, and I can not eat what I raise myself...
I thought it was the babies being taken away from her, so we brought them back the next day, but she wanted nothing to do with them... Even tried to charge them and head-but them!

In desperation, I took her to my good friends, and mentors house, but she is acting the same way there! Now she is driving my friend bat-poo-crazy!

We were thinking about putting a dog bark collar on her to see if it will make her STOP!
Anyone ever try this method? It came highly recommended by another friend...
I don't know what else to do!
I love her to bits! And I do not want to sell her. She is a FABULOUS milker, even as a FF (giving a gallon a day), and is a really sweet, gentle, and loving doe...


----------



## Wild Hearts Ranch (Dec 26, 2011)

I tried it with a citronella collar - turns out goats don't have nearly the sense of smell dogs do, she wasn't the least bit fazed! Lol. Does she have another goat with her? Maybe she's just lonely.


----------



## Dayna (Aug 16, 2012)

Lonely. Hormonal. She just had babies, they were taken away, I'm sure her body is going crazy right now. I wouldn't consider a collar. If she wasn't making this noise before and is now I'd view it as a sign that something is off. Something is wrong. Maybe it's just loneliness, but something is not right with her and her world.


----------



## Abra (Aug 11, 2012)

She's fine. I mean, just fine. Healthy, happy, eating like a piglet, drinking, milking well, etc...
*Dayna...* YES, I really do think she is acting this way because her babies were taken from her... I don't think it's anything else... I tried bringing them back, but as I said, she didn't want them back....
She is just so demanding of humans now. (So much for this little feral goatling I brought home a year ago!) LoL
I don't mind the screaming personally, but it's going to cost me ALL of my goatbabies! 
These are my furry children! My loves! My Darlings!
I know this might seem ridiculous to some people... But my animals keep me sane, happy, and content... I am not much of a people person, never have been, but I have always, since childhood, found comfort, and happiness with animals... My Dogs, Chickens, etc, are great! But it's my Goats that I go to when I feel down! It's my girls that make me smile when I'm sad... If I loose them, a BIG part of me will die!!! I know I am going to sink into a depression so deep, I don't know if I will be able to dig myself out! And in Alaska, when in the winter we get only 3 hours of daylight as it is, and are LUCKY if we see the sun once a month for an hour.... Depression is a BIG deal!

So I'm desperately grasping at straws to try to keep my Beloved Furbabies safe and sound for another 2 years, until we can move out of the house we're in now, and go more remote... Where their noises won't bother anyone!


----------



## Abra (Aug 11, 2012)

Wild Hearts Ranch said:


> Does she have another goat with her? Maybe she's just lonely.


Yes, she has many other goats around. At my friends house, where she is now, there is probably 30 goats in the same pen with her (LARGE 1 acre area). And at home, she is with 3 other does she has been with since she came home over a year ago, when she was just a kid...
I think as a FF, me taking her babies away was a BIG, BIG mistake. I think she is lost, confused, and unsure where all that 'mommy-love' is supposed to go to! I just don't know how to help her get thru it!


----------



## Dayna (Aug 16, 2012)

I think you'll just have to be patient with her. It won't go on forever. Maybe if a neighbor says something you can explain that it won't last. And another thought, can she see you when you are in the house? Maybe find some way to block her view of your coming and going so that she can't see you (or other humans) and maybe that'll help quiet her down.

And having lived in SE Alaska most of my life, I do understand about long dark winters. It really is depressing.


----------



## nchen7 (Feb 25, 2013)

oh, I'm sorry. I give another vote to being hormonal and having her babies taken away. she didn't want them back b/c they didn't smell like her anymore, and she's likely trying to still look for HER babies. give it a little more, and maybe send a note out to your neighbours to pardon the screaming and explain the situation?

I get you with the goats are family. it's perfectly ok to have screaming human babies, but far too many people think non-human babies are disposable so if THEY are loud, then just get rid of them. it's sad really.....


----------



## FarmerJen (Oct 18, 2012)

I also have close neighbors (I'm on a triple lot IN TOWN, less than half an acre, in a residential neighborhood). I worry about noise, but all my neighbors say they love the sounds. One pointed out, they'd rather hear my goats than the neighbor dogs barking all night.  That made a good point. I've noticed that ALMOST ANY time of day or night, I can hear SOMEONE'S dog barking. But nobody makes a stink about it. It's just life. Dogs bark. 

But I feel your pain. One of my does had one particular heat that made her decide to SCREAM for an hour straight at 3 in the MORNING! TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW! I thought for sure they were gonna run me out of town for that one! :-o

I can't even imagine 3hr days. I live in NW Washington, and it's bad enough when we get down to about 7hrs of daylight (if you can call it that - I often have to have the lights on because it's so cloudy). You're in good company here - I think many of us like our goats more than we do most people. :laugh:


----------



## still (Mar 16, 2013)

I had a doe do the EXACT same thing! She was the quietest thing until after kidding. She didn't mother her babies (head-butting and wouldn't let them even touch her) so we pulled them. I thought too that it was because we pulled her babies and we tried putting them back with her and that didn't work. She was still crying and trying to head-butt and run away from the babies. They are now almost 2 months old and I have to admit that she has quieted down again. Anytime anyone would go outside and she saw us she would cry.......OVER & OVER & OVER :wallbang::hammer: It made me not even want to go outside......EVER because she wouldn't shut up!! But eventually she has so don't lose hope and think it'll never end. It will.


----------



## NyGoatMom (Jan 26, 2013)

I myself, am not looking forward to weaning my nubian bottle baby...she has one of those loud SCREAMING voices...:sigh: My neighbors never talk to me....I wonder why:scratch:


----------



## TDG-Farms (Jul 12, 2013)

Aside from giving her her kids back, you are pretty much stuck with a screaming goat. The sick thing is, they will often transfer that scream over to feeding / milking times. We have 2 that are so bad you just wanna punch em in the throat!


----------



## Abra (Aug 11, 2012)

Thanks guys!
I am always so grateful to be able to come here and get a piece of mind. 
You are an AWESOME bunch, and I am happy, and proud to be a part of this group! 
I will keep trying to shush her. I think with time she will go back to the way she used to be.  It's the time between now and then that worries me!


----------



## NyGoatMom (Jan 26, 2013)

I know what you mean, I have some closer neighbors too that I worry about....hope she quiets down soon!


----------



## greenfield (Apr 5, 2012)

Here I go. . telling you something you may not approve of. . . I have a DN wether that sometimes gets very vocal at seven months of age so I started using my technique for moving them away from the gate when I want in - a squirt bottle with water in it. Just one squirt seems to always get their attention. Now at the gate I just say 'get back' and they do!. The little wether - I just say 'I will squirt you' and he will back up, cry a couple more times then stop. Haven't used it in several days now. . . Hope y'all don't think I am mean.


----------



## MrsSneelock (Jun 15, 2013)

That is a great idea! I do that with my cats when they scratch the furniture. But since the goats are so crafty, I would think they'd know when I didn't have the squirt bottle in my hand lol. Thanks for the tip!


----------



## lottsagoats1 (Apr 12, 2014)

The barking collars do work as a last resort. Being part Nubian, being a new mom and having her world changed is probably whats doing it as everyone else said.

Check into your state laws. In my state, livestock and livestock guardian dogs are exempt from noise ordinances/laws. They can make their noise all they want and the laws can't touch you.


----------



## Abra (Aug 11, 2012)

That would be great (the noise laws), but I am in a residental neighborhood, and if the neighbors are not happy, they can vote for you to HAVE to get rid of your livestock.
So I try NOT to make them unhappy!


----------

