Another Treat of Living in Roxborough - GOATS

Roxborough is one of those Colorado communities considered the foothills. Because of that, we are always in danger of forest fires. Pike's National Park starts (or ends, depending on your perspective, at the back of our house. It is beautiful but a fire could change everything, and in several mountain and foothills communities, that has happened over the past several years.

A small slice of 400 goats by our deck.

So our neighborhood took the unusual step of protecting itself with goats. Yes, 400 male goats with horns and beards and huge appetites. This week, the goats were moved to the valley below our house and what a treat! They had no interest in the people watching them; they just wanted to munch and munch.  The sound of 400 sets of grinding teeth was amusing, but so was the 'other sounds' goats make when eating lots and lots of fiber.

Moving the goats around Roxborough

And yes, the mountain lion has been in the area and I understand the lion got one of the goats last week. The owners of the goats put up a fence around the area the goats feed in, and during the day, they are protected by dogs. They don't leave the dogs with the goats at night though, because they are too protective. All five dogs would go after the lion and possibly be hurt or killed. The goat owners said they would rather lose one goat to a lion rather than any of their well-trained and valuable dogs.

Neko is not amused with 

all the extra creatures in his valley.

They stayed in our valley for two days before moving to next area.  What was truly amazing was it took only about 15 minutes to move them out of our area. Maybe the goat subscribe to the idiom of the grass is greener.  However, from what I see, most of what they were eating was brown. After all, it is October.

Ken taking picture. I stayed on the deck.