A full version of this article appears in the magazine.

When a man from the forestry said he was thinking of culling the goats my body tensed and logic was pushed aside by emotion.  I like what he’s doing to the forest behind me, replacing regiments of sterile conifer with a rich mix of broadleaf, but the trouble is, so do the goats. They love the tender shoots and bark of young saplings and it’s not so difficult for them to break through the skimpy, protective tubes.

‘My goats’ are a small gang that live close to our house in the foothills of Moelwyn Bach overlooking the Vale of Ffestiniog. There were six when I first met them, led by an impressive billy crowned with unwieldy, lyre-shaped horns. At the end of that autumn’s rutting season he had been ousted by a thug with a single, scimitar-shaped horn - if he deigned to look at you his face was twisted by the heavy side.

For over two centuries goats have grazed these mountains free-range, escapees from ancient farming stock, discarded with the advent of high volume sheep production. They were the perfect multi-purpose animal providing meat and skin, milk, tallow for candles and hair for judges’ wigs. A mixed flock was considered a good combination with agile goats removing the temptation of lush plants on ledges too perilous for cumbersome sheep.

 

Goat rescue

I took a phone call from my neighbour the farmer – a goat was stuck on a stone wall, could I help him get it down? The goat’s back leg was caught in strands of wire that topped the wall. Its head was on the ground, watching us through the unblinking upside eye, weak from the ordeal and with rusty metal cutting deep into its hoof. We lifted the goat, snipped the wire and carried her down the hill – she must have been trapped for a couple of days and had lost the use of both back legs. Medicine was prescribed and the farmer housed and fed her in a pen and each evening for several weeks the family of goats walked by and called out to her. Eventually she recovered, maybe not as nimble as before and wearing a red tag on each ear - farmers do these things.

Weeks can go by without seeing my goats then one day they’ll stroll past. Sometimes I hear them coming, announced by the plaintive whinnies of a straggler trying to catch up, or I get a whiff when I’m downwind of them. They don’t mind me being around but if I get too close the billy leads them off.

 

Garden attack

They seemed to admire and note our efforts to cultivate the walled garden and I naïvely thought they’d respect our territory. To my dismay I returned one evening to find them munching the runner beans, uprooting strawberry plants and snapping newly planted fruit trees. My instinct was to shake a stick and curse as the adults hopped out and the young kid wriggled through a gap in my porous defences. But I’m not that scary and they were back again the following day so I set to and built a fence on top of the walls. Since then they have left my crops alone.

Each December I take part in the Snowdonia goat census. We look for ‘half sheep’: from a distance the black parts of their coats make them look like truncated sheep. If we get close enough we study their horns to sex and age them. They are multiplying fast on the back of mild winters and making ever more impact on best endeavours to regenerate ancient woodlands.

Last year I was assigned to a group led by Hywel Roberts, a senior warden and specialist in upland plants. Our route took us up a narrow ridge to the summit of Glyder Fawr where we huddled behind pillars of rock as the snow flew past and munched sandwiches. By the end of the day we had counted 27 goats in the Cwm Idwal area, looking as cold and wet as I felt, contributing to the total of 117 for the Glyderau, a modest increase of 12 over the previous year.

My garden is small enough to defend but on a landscape scale fencing is not a viable option. Transportation and contraception are impractical and alas culling by a marksman is the only practical option. But surely not my goats?

Despite the mild winters my gang has had a run of bad luck and is down to just four adults. The one with red tags in her ears was found at the bottom of a cliff, maybe she never regained full agility, and the eldest female died in childbirth with the first of twin kids beside her. I think we’re off the forestry man’s radar for the moment, which is good news, and this year’s kid looks fit and well and full of mischief. For the time being there is an acceptable balance of nature in this part of Snowdonia - thanks in part to my garden fence.

 

Huw Jenkins is a freelance writer and records articles for Radio Wales’s Country Focus. He is author of Not Just a Pretty Place – Survival in Snowdonia.