A goat’s life: It’s not kids’ stuff

DURING the recent Lough Ree Environmental Summer School, I guided boatloads of people around the north end of this beautiful lake.

One of the highlights of each trip was when the boat passed close to the island of Inch McDermot, and we got good views of its fine herd of wild goats.

Technically, of course, these animals are feral rather than wild, because they are the descendants of goats originally brought to Ireland as domestic animals, and which then escaped or were released into the wild. Domestic goats were first brought to Ireland by neolithic farmers about 4,000 years ago and there is evidence some went wild soon after.

This means goats have been wild in this country for longer than, for example, rabbits, hedgehogs or fallow deer and it’s silly to refuse to regard them, as the official position does, as a true part of our native mammal fauna. Wild goats are, nowadays, protected in law in the same way as wild animals, and herds in some of our national parks are actively managed to keep their bloodlines pure.

Protection is necessary because, for much of the 20th century, they were hunted extensively and numbers declined, with some herds being wiped out.

Kids were shot for human consumption and older animals shot to feed greyhounds. There was also a market for goat skins, particularly from bodhrán makers, and goat hair is the traditional material for lawyers’ wigs.

It’s not easy to get precise figures, but it seems that wild goats may have declined from as many as 100,000 animals, in 1870, to between 3,000 and 5,000 in 1970.

The goat is originally from the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

This means that it has problems with the Irish climate. Kids are born in February and many die of hypothermia, particularly kids from herds in mountains or on sea cliffs.

But, in the four thousand years that they have been here, Irish wild goats have evolved a particularly thick skin and heavy coat. This is why they make the best bodhráns and wigs.

The management of goats in our national parks is necessary because, although the basic stock in our herds is ancient, there is also a tendency for them to recruit animals of a more modern breed, which dilute the herd’s genetic purity. The difference between ancient and modern goats can be told by the horns — both the large horns of the billy goat, or puck, and the smaller ones of the nannies.

Ancestral wild goats have the horns set close together on the skull, and they sweep backwards in a regular curve and end up with the points close together. Goats that are recently feral have a distinct space between the base of the horns and they curve outwards, as well as backwards.

Despite the fact that puck goats look magnificent (and smell awful), goat society is a distinctly matriarchal affair. The basic unit of society is a group of females, usually related, under the control of a dominant nanny.

Males live separately and the dominant nanny controls their access to the females during the annual rut in the autumn.

Goat herds have a distinct ecological impact, which is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. In the Burren, for example, it’s positive. The goats prevent the limestone pavement from being smothered in hazel scrub.

A similar thing happens on Inch McDermot, where goat browsing maintains an open, grassy sward that’s attractive to the breeding colony of herring gulls on the island. Herring gulls are in sharp decline in this country and on the verge of being declared endangered, so the goats of Inch McDermot are carrying out valuable conservation work.

[e-mail]