Strange Sounding Goats

🐐 The Curious Case of the Clucking Goat

Sometimes, life hands you a story so strange, you couldn’t make it up if you tried. This is one of those stories.

It began when my wife kindly agreed to take in two goats. Their mother had recently passed away, and the poor creatures were grieving. In their sorrow, they bonded with a chicken—yes, a real chicken—and seemed to adopt its identity.

So when we brought them home and started feeding them, they didn’t bleat like normal goats. No, they clucked. Loudly. “Bawk bawk bawk!”—like they were auditioning for a poultry choir. I didn’t even know goats could make that sound, but there they were, clucking away like woolly hens.

A couple of years passed. One of the original goats died, leaving her brother alone. My wife, ever the goat matchmaker, decided he needed company. So we adopted two retired dairy goats—much smaller than our towering Nubian, who’s about the size of a pony and has the attitude to match.

Just a few days after the new goats arrived, I came home and heard a sound that made me stop: “Meow.” Not a bleat. Not a cluck. A full-on cat meow. I thought one of our cats was stuck outside, but when I went to investigate, I found the source: one of the goats.

Turns out, this goat had been surgically silenced—no working larynx. But that didn’t stop it. Somehow, it had figured out how to mimic other animals. One goat meows like a cat. Another whispers like a ghost. And of course, our original clucker still thinks it’s poultry.

So now, in our backyard, we have a pony-sized goat, two tiny dairy goats, and a barnyard chorus of animal impressions. It’s like living next to a farm-themed improv troupe.