Difficult decisions

For those that follow our blog, you may remember that we were having difficulty with our female angora goat Flora last year.  During the summer she developed lameness in her hoofs and despite trying numerous treatments, we weren’t able to get her back onto her feet until after a visit for our shearer.  She suggested a triple attack (penicillin injections, copper-tox foot dip, plus Ivermectin for the lice that she was sold to us with).  It worked wonders and within two days, she was up on her feet.  But, she started to show some lameness again in early December, so we dipped her feet again (no need for the pen or Ivermectin as she was not ill and the lice were gone).  She again seemed to recover and stayed well until the beginning of February.

Once an animal has hoof problems, they can be incredibly difficult to get rid of.  We had tried a quarantine for our goats, keeping them in the garden for a few weeks and off of the pasture in hopes that the hoof rot organisms would die without constant contact.  Apparently that wasn’t enough.  We have wet land, and we learned that once an animal has hoof problems, they tend to be chronic.  None of the other animals have ever had hoof problems, just the one goat.  So, we had a decision to make.  We do not run a farm sanctuary.  Animals that need constant medical care and aren’t able to carry their own weight don’t really fit into what we’re trying to do here.  Plus, we don’t want animals to have a diminished quality of life and be suffering, or otherwise not attaining their full potential and enjoyment.  We know other people (and farmers) who feel differently than we do, but that is their opinion, and we respect their choices and also expect to have respect for our choices in turn.

Having decided that we did not want to continue to care for Flora (the two main factors being her diminished quality of life and our limited time and resources) we had to decide whether we wanted to try to find her a new home or end her life.  We quickly decided that finding a new home was not the option we wanted, even if we were completely up front about her problems, we would never feel right about passing on a less than ideal animal to another person.  I called our town butcher, initially thinking they could take care of killing and skinning her and we could at least send her hide off to be tanned and turned into a rug.  They said that as long as we had not given her any treatments inside of the documented wait period on the bottle (for example, on the penicillin it says to wait 10 days from the last dose before slaughtering) the meat would be fine and safe to eat.  I was skeptical, never having eaten goat, I had no idea what to expect.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  I knew that from a health perspective the meat would be completely fine to eat, the hoof problems did not effect her at all internally and the treatments had been discontinued well outside of the time period suggested by the manufacturer.  For me, there was just something about eating an animal that had been NAMED and not intended to be eaten.  Its not that I felt a particular attachment to this goat, but it just felt different.  We asked the butcher to grind the meat figuring that we would most likely give it a try, and if we didn’t like it, we would feed it to our dog.  It seemed like it would have been a shame to just discard her carcass and would not have shown her life the respect and value it deserved.

When we went to pick everything up, we came home with about 23 lbs of ground goat, her hide (as well as a deer hide that we bought from the butchers to send off to be tanned), and her head and horns (which are “curing” in the woods in our property).  It was sad that we had to process an animal that we had not intended to, but it seemed like the biggest sign of respect we could give to her was to use every single bit of her body; meat for nourishment, hide for warmth, and skull for educating our children and others that come to the farm.

So, I took one pack of the ground goat and made four different samples with it; one with just some garlic powder and seasoned salt like I would do for hamburgers, one with fennel and seasoning for breakfast sausage, and two with Indian spice mixes I picked up from the local Indian market.  To be honest, the meat was very good.  It was exceptionally lean, and to us, almost flavorless, therefore making it the perfect meat to use in heavily spiced dishes.  Our beef, lamb, and pork are all so wonderfully flavorful, I am often loathe to put anything other than a little salt and pepper on them while cooking.  The goat was so mild in flavor that it didn’t overpower the other spices.

After some research on the internet, I learned that goat is actually starting to become a specialty item in some cities, being called “chevon” on the menu.  It has long been popular in Caribbean and Indian cuisines, and it appears to be gaining popularity here in the States as well.  While we have no intention of raising goats for meat, we do feel that we were able to make the best choice in an otherwise unfortunate situation, and that luckily, we will be able to honor the life of our sweet goat by making wonderful meals for our family and friends.