Goat Milk and The Pope
(by R.R. Graham, as printed in: American Dairy Goat News - August 1946)

In 1878 at the death of Pope Pius IX, an even number of Cardinals (some 64) voted for several months trying to select a successor, but the vote was always a tie. The voting Cardinals are supposed not to have any communication with one another but, after months and months, some grapevine message united them to elect to the Popedom, their fellow, Cardinal Pecci. Now the reason was Pecci was an invalid and surely, they reasoned, could not live over a few months, six at the most. After his death, there would be left 63 of them, an uneven number, and there would be no tie in electing a new Pope.

So, Pecci was elected and assumed the title of Leo XIII. The three physicians of the Pope examined Pecci thoroughly and, after a consultation, put him on a goat milk diet. He made such vast improvement that he turned to goat food almost exclusively, taking not only the milk, but goat butter and goat meat!

In 1903, having been Pope for twenty-five years, the old gentleman died at the age of 93. Meantime he had buried every one of the Cardinals who had elected him in 1878.

Glass Bottles Are Costly and Inefficient
(Dairy Goat Journal - July 1939)

Three hundred and five million glass milk bottles were manufactured during 1937, according to New England Homestead, not because that many were put into use, but because it took practically that many glass bottle to replace those that had been broken or lost through negligence and carelessness of the milk consuming public. Thus, a little more than $15,000,000 was lost to the milk industry - which, in self defense, had to build this gigantic red figure back into the cost of distributing milk to the consumer.

Goat dairymen as a rule suffer in even greater proportion than cow dairymen, because of often irregular deliveries, scattered customers, and higher price of the product. The question is how long can the milk business survive the carelessness of the American public in the loss of the inefficient glass bottle? Why should this staggering charge be shouldered by consumers, when there is available a tremendously more efficient container made of fiber, and which is more popular then glass in every market where it had been used?

Not only does such a "use-once" container overcome these losses, but it saves many pounds weight in delivery costs; it eliminated much costly sterilizing and handling equipment.

The BIG controversy of 1946 ........ the new rule ....... ya gotta tattoo your goat.
(letter to the editor The Goat World - October 1946):

Dear Sir, I have just read Mrs. John's letter in the GOAT WORLD about tattooing. We are absolutely opposed to it. Is it not enough to torture the kids by dehorning and disbudding?

We are in full accord with Mrs. John's letter, and anything that can be done to alter this rule has our wholehearted support. I am speaking only for ourselves, not for our association, the San Joaquin Valley Dairy Goat Association, but this association has gone on record as opposing tattooing. Mrs. Archie C. Berry, Clovis, Calif.

(some excerpts from letters to The Goat World - May to November 1946):

"the only good that tattooing does is that it makes business for those that have tattooing merchandise for sale"

"It seems to me that it would be better to give it ( tattooing) a fair and unprejudiced trial until it proves its value, or the reverse."

"I will not tattoo any of my goats"

Excerpts from "Winter Brings Out Abscesses and Boils"
From Dairy Goat Journal (February 1942) (subscription rate 3 years $1.00):

Reports of abscesses are frequently received during the winter months. These abscesses are pimples or boils and frequently occur on the face, the jaw, or the neck of goats. Dairymen are at a loss to understand the presence of these skin eruptions. Chains of boils may be seen on the head and neck of sheep as well. They are frequently cause by the filth germ .....

(oh yeah, the old filth germ) :-)

Dairy Goat Journal - March 1938
Goats For Baby's Nurse In Cuba
by H.G. Hall, Chicago, Ill.

I have traveled in Cuba, where the goat is the maid as well as nurse for human infants. I have seen them, on many occasions, care for the baby among the lower classes of farmers there. The goat will stay near the huts, which are made of palm bark and leaves. The goats are not tied, but run loose. If the child cries the goat will run to it. The child is generally in a crib, and wears no clothes. The goat will get on a stool and wait until someone places the teat in the child's mouth. The goat sleeps on the back porch, generally in a box; the hut and porch usually have but dirt floors.

THE PENNY MAGAZINE - July 18, 1835
Goats as Wet-nurses.
--It is ordinary, all about where I live, to see the countrywomen, when they want suck of their own, to call goats to their assistance. And I have, at this hour, two footmen that never sucked woman's milk more than eight days after they were born. These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children, well knowing their voices when they cry, and come running to them; when, if any other than that they are acquainted with be presented to the, they refuse to let it suck, and the child, to any other goat, will do the same. I saw one the other day, from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourish it (by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbor) that would not touch any other they could bring, and doubtless died of hunger.
--Montaigne's Essays: Cotton's Translation, 1711. 

 Science 2000 Mar 24;287(5461):2254-7 
 

Zeder MA, Hesse B   -Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560-0112, USA. 

Initial goat domestication is documented in the highlands of western Iran at 10,000 calibrated calendar years ago. Metrical analyses of patterns of sexual dimorphism in modern wild goat skeletons (Capra hircus aegagrus) allow sex-specific age curves to be computed for archaeofaunal assemblages. A distinct shift to selective harvesting of subadult males marks initial human management and the transition from hunting to herding of the species. Direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates on skeletal elements provide a tight temporal context for the transition.