In this article extract from the November 2024 edition of The Country Smallholder magazine, Tamsin Cooper talks to scientists about the goats they study including Natalie; a much-loved resident of Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent.

Natalie was a resident of Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent. I met her in 2010 when she was just a kid. She and her sister, Nadia, had been. destined for the slaughterhouse when a kind man adopted them and hand-reared them in his garden. Quickly they outgrew the space, so their saviour wisely passed them on to the sanctuary.

The sisters were Saanen-type dairy goats, but Natalie had inherited a dark coat with Swiss markings, as occasionally occurs in Saanen descendants. They spent the rest of their lives at the sanctuary, where they were well fed and cared for, roaming free-range during the day, sleeping in a comfortable barn, and always much loved by staff, volunteers and visitors.

Sadly, Nadia died young due to health issues. Fortunately, Natalie bonded with young wether, Vern. Natalie was wonderfully friendly, winning hearts and getting up to all sorts of mischief. She was well-known for her curiosity, intelligence and cheekiness. Her antics were often bemoaned affectionately by her carers. After staff closed the goats in their pens at night, Natalie often escaped from her own and drew open the bolts on other goats’ pens. Her indefatigable problem-solving skills gained her entry to forbidden places, despite reinforced defences, including the feed room where she was often found snaffling vegetables.

AN INSPIRATION FOR RESEARCH
At this time, animal welfare researchers Alan McElligott and Elodie Briefer were studying goats’ vocalisations, recording and analysing their bleats. Staff anecdotes of goats opening locks fascinated them and provided new directions for their research.This resulted in a series of goat cognition studies, exploring caprine intelligence and emotions, undertaken by McElligott of City University in Hong Kong, his associates and PhD students.

McElligott explains, “Through our research, we’ve been able to find out that goats are particularly intelligent, they’ve long-term memory and they’re actually good at problem-solving. We give them complex food retrieval tasks and they’re able to solve it and get the food back quite quickly. The other really interesting thing was we returned to the same goats one year later and tested them with the same puzzles and they all remembered how to retrieve the food from the box within a few seconds.”

Their research also revealed how they recognise and remember the bleats of family members and pen mates. Furthermore, they demonstrated that goats are highly attentive to people, can follow our cues (touching, pointing, etc.) and attempt to communicate with us.Importantly, they investigated how goats express emotions and found that they are sensitive to emotions expressed by other goats and people, both vocally and through facial expressions.

Picture caption: Natalie the goat

This article extract was taken from the November 2024 edition of The Country Smallholder. To read the article in full, you can buy the issue here.

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