A year ago I had this brilliant idea to bond our bottle goat Ace to our cow herd. We started with a bottle calf, which he was scared to death of at first. Then a group of replacement heifers and now he is with the whole herd on pasture and he never leaves the herd. Goats are a herd animal and they get separation anxiety just like any other animal.  We even have a neighbor with goats on the other side of the fence.  I figured he would just go hang out by the fence with those other goats, but he stays right with the cow herd.

If you have ever owned a goat, you know how hard it is to keep goats in. We don't have any special fence to keep him in, because he won't leave his herd.  We don't need a guardian dog because we have momma cows that will stomp any coyote that try's to eat a herd member.  He stays with the cows year around. 

Over the weekend we picked up Clyde, a 2 year old bottle goat that had been living with some horses.  They wanted to get rid of him because he kept butting their children and knocking them down.  We hauled him out to the pasture, introduced him to Ace and drove off.  When we left, he ran straight for the cow herd, so we turned around and watched from a distance.  He was running around head butting cows! It was quite entertaining!

I want goats in my cow herd to eat the brush and weeds that the cows don't prefer to eat.  I haven't seen them eat thistles, but they love multiflora rose bushes, which is an invasive species in Iowa that needs to be controlled. I am hoping the goats will be an environmentally friendly way to control multiflora rose, which will also save me a lot of time and money. 

Given our success with Ace, we picked up 4 more bottle goats and we have them with our bottle calf.  They will go into our cow herd this fall.