They’re noisy, smelly and wreck the garden. So are the 50 0000 Brits who insist a goat is a man’s best friend just a bunch of silly billies?
Like a typical dog, Benjamin enjoys having his tummy tickled, and will eat anything — socks, shoelaces, cushions — he can get his tiny teeth into.
He also loves nothing better than curling up on the sofa and watching his favourite TV programmes while owner Tom Horsfield fondly strokes his fur.
But there’s something unusual about this otherwise ordinary scene — for Benjamin isn’t a dog; he’s a goat.
Tom is one of the tens of thousands of people in this country — thought to be around 53,000 — who keep goats as household pets.
The animals, traditionally thought of as livestock like sheep, pigs and cattle, have become so domesticated that owners say it’s just like having a canine companion. Goats like Benjamin can follow commands, come to heel and beg for food. Their ears perk up at the sound of their own name, and some have even been taught to sit on their hind legs.
They’re comfortable wearing collars and some owners even take them for walks (Tom regularly takes Benjamin out on a leash), learning to cross roads and navigate crowds.
Celebrities, it seems, have been goat devotees for years: actress Reece Witherspoon has three as pets, and TV star Tori Spelling is frequently seen taking hers for a stroll in downtown LA.
It sounds like the stuff of nonsense, akin to keeping a cow in the kitchen, but fans say many of the myths about goats — that they’re aggressive, smelly and eat the washing off your line — bear little relation to the docile, inquisitive creatures they keep as pets.
Now even scientists have declared them to be one of man’s best friends.
After conducting experiments on a herd of the animals at a sanctuary in Kent, researchers from Queen Mary University in London concluded that goats can form bonds with humans in the same way as dogs — and are considerably better at doing so than cats.
Not only that, but they were shown to be far more intelligent than their reputation suggests.
So can having a pet goat really be as good as having a dog?
As a nation of pooch-lovers (by way of comparison, the UK dog population is estimated at 8.5 million), we’ll take some convincing.
Unsurprisingly, Tom, 31, from Silkstone in South Yorkshire, is a total convert. The estate manager at Pot House Hamlet, a tourist farm and wedding venue where he grew up, he says he became a ‘surrogate mother’ to Benjamin after his mother abandoned him at birth.
‘I found him huddled in the corner of a pen on our petting farm a year and a half ago. His mother had had twins, decided to reject him and left him for dead. I took him in and he slept in the kitchen for six weeks.
‘I became his surrogate mother, feeding him milk five times a day, often in the middle of the night, and bringing him back to life. He’s so tame because this is all he’s ever known.’
Tom, who lives with his girlfriend, Lauren, 25, insists Benjamin ‘is more like a dog than a goat. He gets along better with humans than with animals, even other goats.’
Apparently Benjamin is a fan of the fantasy series Game Of Thrones, enjoys rugby league and is an avid Barnsley Football Club supporter. Most days he can be found trotting around the country estate being led on a lead by Tom — and the crowds flock to see him.
After Tom uploaded a video of Benjamin to YouTube in 2014, the goat became a viral internet sensation. To date, more than a billion people have watched his adorable antics.
Benjamin now has a range of merchandise comprising T-shirts and calendars, his own Instagram page and ardent admirers have offered Tom tens of thousands of pounds to buy him.
‘He loves the attention,’ Tom explains. ‘He’s a very personable guy. All goats are. They’re far friendlier than horses and cleverer than sheep.’ Today, Benjamin prefers to sleep outdoors, but trots in and out of the house at will. The only thing Tom hasn’t trained him to do, it seems, is fetch a stick.
Several hundred miles away in rural Bedfordshire, a black and white furball called Heidi scampers around the back garden of Penelope Mason’s home.
Heidi is also a goat, but, like Benjamin, she’s got some very canine traits — wagging her tail as she bounds across the lawn and nuzzles her owner’s palms for tasty treats.
She leaps up at Penelope’s waist and prods her with her front paws, gazing imploringly into her eyes until Penelope relents and feeds her a biscuit.
‘Good girl,’ she coos, ruffling Heidi’s coat and scratching behind her ears.
Penelope started keeping goats 30 years ago — and became so fond of them that over the years she has acquired a herd of 18.
As well as Heidi, she has a further eight Pygmy, or miniature, goats; seven full-sized Anglo-Nubians (distinctive because of their long, floppy ears) and two Golden Guernseys, which are a rich yellow colour and produce milk that Penelope makes into cheese and soap.
They all live in the two-acre garden of the small cottage Penelope, 57, shares with her husband Malcolm, 59. By day they live in a wire and wooden pen and by night in a series of interconnected sheds. But she’s not averse to letting them wander freely over her lawn.
‘We love to sit out here in the evening and spend time with them,’ she says. ‘It’s incredibly calming — I suffer from depression and I find them very soothing to be around. It’s a form of therapy, just like some people get with a dog or a cat.’
Goats are ‘browsing’ animals, like deer, which means they eat every flower and shrub they can get their teeth into — so Penelope’s garden is sparse and there’s 4 ft of wire mesh wrapped around the base of all the trees so the goats don’t gnaw the bark.
‘It’s like having a gardener — they prune everything, whether you want them to or not,’ she laughs.
They get on well with other animals: Penelope’s four oriental cats prowl around them with the breed’s usual disdain, but her Border terrier, Louis, who died recently, used to love playing with the family goats.
‘They really are like dogs,’ she says. ‘They’ll eat from your hand, jump into your arms for a cuddle, and if I leave the door open they’ll wander into the kitchen and start nosing around for some food. I’m very attached to them and they’re very affectionate back.’
Visitors get an enthusiastic — if a little sloppy — welcome, too. One, a snow-white six-year-old named Polly, decides to show her affection by pooing on my shoe, while Pumpkin, a four-month-old kid, nudges my notepad with a shiny wet nose.
To the uninitiated, the notion of treating a farmyard animal as a pet may sound cruel.
But goats are more than used to being around humans. They were the first livestock species to be domesticated, around 10,000 years ago. Neolithic farmers herded them for milk, meat and dung, used as fuel, and for centuries they’ve been put to work eating unwanted vegetation — most recently in the U.S., where goats have been used to clear flammable dry brush from Californian hillsides.
The most popular breed as a pet is the Pygmy, which measures 18 to 20 in tall and weighs up to 6 st. Those found in this country — there are thought to be around 83,000 goats in total, with 30,000 used commercially to produce milk and meat — come from West Africa, and have been gradually growing in number since the early Eighties.
Most breeders are in Devon and Cornwall — this is where Penelope buys her goats, at £200 for a boy and £250 for a girl (which are more expensive as they can produce kids) — but owners are dotted across the country, from rural areas to inner cities.
There are no ‘nanny state’ restrictions on keeping a goat as a pet — owners simply need to apply to local government for a ‘holding number’ and a ‘herd number’, so the animals can be tagged and tracked — and it’s advised to keep them in pairs (Benjamin is a rare exception), because they’re natural herders.
Other than that, all you need is food (mineral-rich grain sold at country stores), drink (lots of fresh water) and space for them to run around.
In Viv McNeil’s case, this is her small back garden in Epsom, Surrey, which is home to three goats: Sarsaparilla and Aquarius, both three, and four-month-old Rosebery Acorn.
‘I have no connection whatsoever to farming,’ says Viv, a former nursery teacher. ‘A friend of a friend had told me about Pygmy goats, and when we moved into this house in 1987, I thought it would be nice to get some for the garden.
‘My husband, Ian, didn’t show any interest, but our three children were little at the time, so they loved the idea. We all went down in the car to pick up our first two goats from a breeder in Southampton — and I’ve never looked back.’
Viv says one of the most appealing things about pet goats is the low cost of keeping them.
‘A 20 kg (44 lb) bag of goat cereal costs me £9 and lasts two goats several months,’ she explains.
‘They have only a couple of ounces twice a day. They eat hay, too, and that’s more expensive — £6 for a bale that lasts two or three weeks — but that really is all you need. For a special treat, I feed them dry pasta. I put some in my pocket and they all come running.’
Unlike the others, Viv doesn’t live in a rural area — there are houses on either side and gardens backing directly on to hers. But she says she’s never had a complaint from the neighbours about her rather unorthodox choice of pet.
‘They bleat when they see me coming because they know it’s teatime,’ she explains. ‘But otherwise they’re very quiet. It’s when they’re kidding that they can be particularly vocal. I’ve had a few ear-splitting screeches at two in the morning, but nobody’s knocked on the door to grumble just yet.’
Like most owners, it’s their messy habits that Viv struggles with the most. ‘You can’t house-train them,’ she explains. ‘I’m always going round mopping up after them — it’s relentless.’
Sure enough, all three owners’ gardens are a minefield of goat droppings, discarded feed — they’re fussy eaters and refuse to eat anything that has fallen on the ground — and bald patches of green where the blades have been munched away.
And there’s a pungent stench hanging in the air, too — like wet dog crossed with manure — and I find myself hopscotching across the grass for fear of stepping in something nasty.
It’s a small price to pay, however, for the joy these boisterous animals clearly bring their owners.
Goats, like dogs, have a healthy lifespan — they can survive up to 15 years — and for most the companionship they offer far outweighs any inconvenience.
‘You might think it’s weird having pet goats, but they bring me so much happiness,’ says Penelope Mason.
‘They poo and bleat and smell terrible and they’ve completely destroyed my garden — but I still love them all to bits.’
Daily Mail