Whilst many birds and animals in the Highlands are facing up to the rigours of winter in their various ways one animal is different. Wild goats, some people prefer to call them feral goats, have to face the cold weather and the nannies also have another problem. In the period between the end of January and the end of March they will be having their kids. There is an added complication with some nannies as, whilst a single kid is normal, it is not uncommon for a nanny to have twins. This increases the problem of feeding and leads to a greater chance of predation by golden eagles or foxes. If the kids are born early in this period they may well face the worst of the winter weather and mortality may be high. Apart from the fact that this will keep the numbers of wild goats in check there seems to be no rational explanation why the births take place at this inhospitable time of the year.
The origin and name of wild goats is still open to debate with some calling them wild goats, others feral goats, but one thing is certain, they have been living in tribes, as the groups are called, for very many years. I always think of them as being there from domestic stock introduced or escaped as far back as 3,000 years. Whatever the source of the existing tribes in the Highlands some have been around a long time. In more recent times there have been two main events that have affected goat numbers. One is during the days of droving cattle when they were driven down well established drove roads from as far north as Caithness and Sutherland and even from the Western Isles.
What many people do not know is that there was also a droving of animals going north, of goats from Ireland with many, many thousands being brought over. The further north the goats went, presumably using the cattle drovng roads, the wilder the landscape and many goats escaped and formed their own self maintaining tribes. The other major event was the infamous clearances as the goats kept by the people in all the parishes had to be released and they went to the hills and lived quite happily. Before the clearances the goats had given milk, meat, hides, hair etc. etc. and they were commonly known as “the poor man’s cow”. Prior to the clearances there were amazing number of goats in parishes with some even having 1,000 and most parishes had hundreds.
Goats have figured extensively in folklore and legend and became an integral part of religion and witchcraft, but there have been more practical uses for them. Some people used to keep goats with horses as they were reputed to calm the horses down. If they were hunting horses, the presence of the goat meant that they would never kick out at the hounds. Likewise if a horse refused to board a ship a goat was led ahead and the horse would follow. This gave rise to the expression “Judas Goat” – a goat which led stock into an abattoir for slaughter. There was also the interesting theory that goats are reputed to keep snakes away from an area. This was supposed to be the case in several areas in the Highlands with adders. Indeed, such was the case with a farmer at Torrachilty, near Inverness, who introduced goats to the area in about 1880 to keep adders down. Sadly the days of many tribes of wild goats are over in the Highlands because of misguided management by landowners and land managers who have just shot them out. There are far less wild goats in the Highlands now than there have been for many, many centuries.
Tags: highland wildlife