Kids are livin’ it up at Six Tail Farm

March 5, 2004
by Ali Seger
Staff Reporter

You know it’s time to keep the kids out of the kitchen when they start jumping up on the table, knocking things over and getting into your cereal bowls. That is, of course, when the kids you’re talking about are baby goats.

Ian MacInnes, assistant professor of English, has been raising goats with his wife Michele since they lived in Virginia. They moved to Albion nine years ago, bringing the goats along with them in the back of their station wagon.

“Car trips with kids are one thing, but imagine traveling through the Appalachian Mountains with a car full of goats,” MacInnes said.

Michele MacInnes claims that they originally got the goats because her husband wanted to use them as pack animals for hiking. “It’s all his fault,” she said.

Ian had a another reason: “Goats make great pack animals because they are cheap and fit in the back of a station wagon,” he said. “But Michele’s parents would never let her have pets growing up, hence her current obsession with pets and our farm.”

Whatever the reason, the MacInnes family now lives on a farm in Albion with cats, dogs, pigeons, chickens and, of course, goats.

Though the farm is named Six Tail Farm after their six cats, the focal point is definitely the goats. From the woven wire fences surrounding the yard to the small yellow goat-crossing sign out front, their presence is everywhere, even inside the house.

“We bring the baby goats into the kitchen every morning,” Michele said. “It’s a great way to socialize them and get them used to being around people.”

Ian added, “But we have to kick them out once they jump up on the kitchen table. I don’t know how they do it, they are amazing jumpers.”

The goats may have been intended as pack animals, but that didn’t quite work out. Now Michele and Ian drink goat milk, they make goat cheese and ice cream and even occasionally eat goat for dinner.

“You really hate to do that because they are almost like pets, but it is a farm and sometimes you just have too many so it gets really overcrowded,” Michele said.

Ian said, “It’s hard to know where to draw the line, because some are definitely pets that we would never eat.

Among the pet goats are Cutie and Tripod. Cutie just broke a leg, which was costly to fix, but lately the goat has become really friendly and nuzzles with the family, making it harder to make a choice of whether to eat him. Then there is Tripod, who had a leg amputated when he was younger.

“He’s probably the meanest goat out there and we would have no problem eating him under normal circumstances,” Ian said. “But we spent all that money on his operation and that sort of puts him more on the status of ‘pet.’”

Raising goats also presents other challenges, like keeping them off cars and out of roses.

“Goats are great climbers and will climb on anything,“ Ian said. “Unfortunately their hooves aren’t good for things like the hood of your car. They also hate eating grass and will somehow find their way to your favorite plant or the new tree that was just planted. I spend a lot of time building fences.”

Despite these challenges, choosing to raise goats can be a very rewarding experience.

“They may not like grass very much but they love weeds and are great for keeping the weeds in the yard down,” Michele said. “You may get tired at parts of it [raising goats] but it’s always nice when the babies come. And you get to build nice relationships with the mothers because they have such great personalities.”