11 Facts About Goats

Two phrases I never want uttered in my home again are:

We’re out of eggs.

That’s the last of the milk.

I am remedying the egg situation soon, very soon.  And I am strongly considering a goat for the milk cure.

Now before you curl up your nose at the mention of goat milk, I must go on the defense.

But first I must start with a confession.  I’ve never tasted goat’s milk.  I have however tasted goat cheese and promptly barfed afterward.  I blogged about that.  I think I had the Goat Flu.  You can read about it here.  But who’s to say it was the goat cheese that made me retch?  It could’ve been a virus or something. 

This is my mediocre attempts to convince myself that I need a goat. 

Yes, I know you are probably thinking goats have a notorious reputation of being tin can eaters, car hood jumpers, and head butters.  I’m here to redeem the reputation of the goat. 

Much like placenta eating, we the people of the United States of America are likely missing out on something profound and wonderful.

Last night, I propped myself up on pillows in my bed and read a book about the dairy goats.

Facts I’ve learned, that I must pass on to you, my darling readers:

• The goat is related to the deer.
• Yes, goats might eat everything, but build a pen.  Don’t blame the goat!
• Does are not smelly, but those bucks are the stinkiest, foulest, nastiest creatures (learned from experience)
• Bucks are smelly due to scent glands, but also because they piss all over the front of their legs, beards, and faces.
• Does are not smelly, rather they are dainty, fastidious, intelligent, friendly, and fun (sounds like a great personal ad)
• In the world today, more people use goat milk than cow milk
• There is no difference in the taste of raw, whole cow milk and raw, whole goat milk.
• Many doctors prescribe goat milk for cases of dyspepsia, peptic ulcer, liver dysfunction, jaundice.
• Goat milk can be used for infants during weaning, infants with eczema, and pregnant women who are puking their guts up.
• Goat milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk due to smaller fat globules.
• In goat genetics, white is dominant and black is recessive.

Goat’s milk should not taste funny.  If it does, it is  due to unsanitary milking parlors, unclean utensils, feed or weeds that the goat has recently eaten, the smelly buck being in the vicinity, or other reasons.  So now, I need to find some goat people.  I’d like a tall glass of goat milk to sample. 

If you’re still thinking raw goat milk is grody, you won’t believe how gross raw denim is.

This boy wore the same jeans for 15 months without washing them.

A Canadian student tested the limits of personal hygiene by wearing the same unwashed jeans for over 15 months.

While this may not be ideal for most people, it surprisingly was discovered to cause no health risks for healthy people.

Josh Le, a student at the University of Alberta, was so excited when he bought a pair of Nudie Jeans in September 2009 that he wore them every day. He even went so far as to sleep in them for a month, according to the National Post.

Nudie Jeans are raw jeans that are specifically designed to shape itself to the contours of the individual’s body. Raw denim isn’t chemically treated or washed prior during manufacturing. It is sold to the consumer stiff like cardboard. The idea is that wearing the jeans without washing them will result in the indigo color wearing away at pressure points in the fabric, showing the individual’s body contours. When the jeans are eventually washed, the individual’s shape will be revealed in the pattern that develops, according to The Star .

After wearing his raw denim for 15 months and one week, Le went to a professor of textile science at the University of Alberta, Rachel McQueen. She assisted him with an informal experiment. They took bacterial swabs from different areas of the jeans, including the front, back and crotch area.

“I expected to find some bacteria associated with the lower intestine such as E. coli, but was surprised to find there weren’t any, just lots of normal skin bacteria,” McQueen told the University student newspaper site . McQueen carries out research in the development of odour and its relationship to bacteria in textiles.

She had been expecting to find harmful bacteria, such as E. coli, in the crotch area, but there were only non-harmful, skin bacteria colonies. She did warn, however, that it was just one unpublished study on a single pair of jeans, and it may not be true for all cases.

Raw denim is growing in popularity, with other teenagers wearing the jeans for six-month stretches to get an individual look.

(news source http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/student-wears-unwashed-jeans-for-15-straight-months-2011-01-26-1.347162)

Maybe we’re all just a bunch of germaphobes.