Dogs

Actually, I think it came out the other end!

 

Ya gotta smile at anything a Lab does.

My Lab was notorious for that. He was always nervous about being indoors the few times that we let him in, so he was essentially an outdoor dog. Thank goodness! (His name was Bubba if that tells you anything. He was born in Georgia.)

 

We have goats. A couple of years ago I was painting some window trim and turned around to see 2 loose goats happily drinking paint out of the can. I quickly pulled up the MSDS to see if it was going to kill them and saw it contained ethylene glycol (standard automobile antifreeze). Bad. I searched for emergency treatment and saw... ethanol. Apparently the liver will preferentially metabolize the ethanol and let the ethylene glycol pass unmetabolized (it is the aldehyde produced by metabolizing the stuff that is actually harmful). So I gave them a big bowl of the hefe I had on tap and a few charcoal tablets. They were fine, though I have no idea if they ingested enough paint to harm themselves in the first place. Now, of course they have a taste for beer. Sitting by the barn and trying to drink a beer is quite an adventure.

 

^ Post of the day!

 

I have a lot of goat stories but that is the only one that is beer related.

 

Hefeweizen with charcoal is now stocked in my medicine cabinet. Just in case I ever decide to get goats. Or drink paint.

 

One correction: ethylene glycol is actually metabolized to oxalic acid. I was thinking of methanol poisoning which is also treated with ethanol.

 

Years ago, a friend of mine had a pitty that loved beer. You had to hold onto the can or bottle when he was around or he would "accidentally" knock it over and lap it up. Once he knocked over my can of coke and gave me a look like "What the hell is this?"

 

Wasn't there a town in Nevada or somewhere out west that elected a beer guzzling goat the mayor? I remember it somehow making the bottle dance in it's teeth as he drank it.

 

By law, in the county I live in, I can own one goat on our acreage. The only thing keeping me from getting one is that it'd probably eat the garden and all the flowers in the backyard.

 

Only video I could find was of the current goat mayor drinking soda, but the previous mayor who chugged beer is stuffed in a local bar with a bottle of Lone Star in his mouth.



Looks like there is a town in Vermont with a goat mayor as well.
Other videos of beer drinking goats as well.

 

It will definitely eat your garden and flowers. We got ours for brush control but they prefer cultivated plants. Our vegetable garden is raised beds surrounded by chain link fence. The only thing I've seen them refuse to eat was 3 day old spent grain when I finished the brew day in a thunderstorm and didn't clean the mash tun for a while.

 

Thanks for confirming what we thought. Definitely not looking to lose all the cool perennial flowers suited to our backyard that we inherited from previous owners. Also, Queen Evelyn, the box turtle that lives in our backyard, would be royally pissed if all her cover was gone.

I just wanted one because I think they're cool, and fell in love with them while I worked in cheese and visited various goat dairies/creameries.

 

Having goats is definitely a love/hate relationship. They are super friendly and personable and just as cute as puppies when they are young. Also super destructive if they go where they shouldn't be - as they usually do. Containment is difficult. A goat worthy electric fence requires about 10X the Joules that a horse fence needs. And it needs to be really tall or most breeds will jump it.

 

From what I understand, donkeys absolutely HATE coyotes, so they would probably keep feral dogs away as well.

 

Donkeys hate canines of all stripes and will stomp them to death if they get the chance. We always warn friends and relatives to be super careful if they visit with dogs. We have had a bear and a bobcat enter the barn but never a coyote. They tolerate our own dogs, barely and grudgingly.