PHOTOS: Cute Lowcountry SC baby goat triplets born at Myrtle Beach area zoo
Brookgreen Gardens welcomed three bright new faces last week: Baby goat triplets!
The three kids, as baby goats are called, are the most adorable creatures on display at Brookgreen right now. It’s just a fact.
Despite being only six days old on a recent visit, the trio were already jumping and playing around.
Their names are Dobby, Kreature and Winky, after three house elves from the Harry Potter books. This year, all of the new baby goats at Brookgreen will have Harry Potter-themed names. Dobby and Kreature are boys, and Winky is a girl, said Andrea DeMuth, vice president and curator of zoological collections at Brookgreen. Though, right now, it’s a little hard to tell the three kids apart.
“What’s amazing is that our own babies don’t get up and jump around shortly after they’re born,” DeMuth said. ”These guys are on their feet within probably 10 minutes of being born and nursing as soon as they can get mom to stand still. They’re already starting to chew on hay, and they’re just less than a week old.”
This group of goats also arrived quite early. The zoo didn’t expect them to be born until late April or early May. Their mom, Tammy, gave birth to them March 8. All of the kids were born healthy, though Winky is noticeably smaller than her siblings.
The kids are helping preserve the Lowcountry bloodline of South Carolina’s Spanish goats. They are part of a group of “heritage breeds” that were brought to the region by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s to help feed and support settlers.
“(Colonizers) dropped off provisions pretty much so that if they needed to eat, they could go down to the beach and/or go to the island and pull up a boat and go catch a few goats,” DeMuth said.
Heritage breeds are much hardier than other breeds, have few health problems and can survive on their own in the wild. A major focus for Brookgreen Gardens’ zoo is preserving these heritage breeds. Another heritage breed at the zoo is the Marsh Tacky horse, which can tromp through swamps easily but isn’t really built for racing. Brookgreen also has Dominique chickens, Red Devon cows and Tunis sheep.
“The Marsh Tacky, they were just left loose out on the barrier islands and beaches. And if somebody needed a horse, you just go out there and get one. They were wild, like Mustangs,” DeMuth said.
Now, heritage breeds are “disappearing because people aren’t breeding them,” DeMuth said. “They’re going for the show-quality chickens and and show cows and sheep. It’s the same thing with horses. The Marsh Tacky horse is a very scruffy looking horse.”
Preserving the heritage breeds isn’t just about animal conservation, it’s also about preserving human history. Marsh Tacky horses, for example, were useful for sneaking up on the British, whose high-brow horses weren’t built for trudging through messy forests and swampland.
Not only are the Lowcountry goats a strong breed, they are also quite good parents. The moms keep a close eye on their young when they are first born and train them on the best time to feed, so they aren’t dependent on snacking on milk all day long.
Brookgreen has been breeding Lowcountry bloodline Spanish goats since 2010, when the Livestock Conservancy was able to get one male and four females from an isolated island located near Charleston. Hundreds of the goats live on that island. After 12 years of breeding, Brookgreen has produced about 50 Lowcountry goats.
Fun goat facts
Isn’t it strange how people call both baby goats and human children “kids”? Must be some similarities going on...
“They eat, then they sleep, just like regular babies,” DeMuth said.
The kids are also very active as soon as they are born and play nonstop in between naps, DeMuth said.
“I’ve seen them just jump in place and completely turn around at the same time. They’re very acrobatic,” DeMuth said.
Once they get bigger, they’ll get to play in the larger goat pen at Brookgreen Gardens.
“We’ll have to put some climbing structures out here, but they will be playing, oh yeah. We’ll have them first in the outer yard, but we’ve got to do a little baby proofing, so there’s not a big enough gap for them to get out” through the fence, DeMuth said.
Male Lowcountry goats get to be about 120 pounds, while females get to be about 90 pounds.
Once the new triplets are three months old, they will join the rest of their herd on a ranch in Abbeville, where the Spanish Goat Conservancy keeps a close eye on the various bloodlines to maintain genetic diversity, DeMuth said. At the ranch, they’ll spend most of their time foraging, giving them a more varied and healthy diet than Brookgreen can offer on its much smaller property. The goats will be fully grown when they are a year and a half old.
Dobby, Kreature and Winky won’t be alone for long. There are more goats on the way! Another one of Brookgreen’s female goats is pregnant and is likely to give birth in the coming weeks or months.
Competition for the title of Cutest Baby Animal
Dobby, Kreature and Winky might have a lot of fans among Brookgreen’s visitors right now. However, they’ve got some big competition on the way: River otter pups.
Five river otter pups were born at Brookgreen in January and will be going on display in late April.
Lately, the baby goats have been the most popular attraction. But, “I think when our baby otters go outside, they will beat them,” DeMuth said.
The baby goat limelight can’t last forever.
