San Clemente Island Goats at PsiKeep

San Clemente Island buck three years old

Doe and kids

San Clemente Island goat kids

I started breeding San Clemente Island goats in 2003 when I purchased a buckling (buck kid) and a doeling (doe kid) from Mardi Rivetti down in Valencia California. I was in Los Angeles when the San Clemente goat rescue was taking place. It seemed a lot of people got very upset when they found out the Navy was using the goats as target practice. The goats were regarded as vermin. Back then you could purchase the does through the rescue program but the government would not sell you a buck. Fortunately there were pregnant does that were rescued and some of those does had buck kids. The goats that are descended from that rescue were from those rare bucklings that slipped through the governments hands.

Life does prevail against all odds.

I was a renter back then and I had no place for a goat but when I moved to northern California I saw the necessity of getting some goats to help clear the brush. The San Clemente Island goat is a beautiful goat. The does look like antelope and the bucks look like a small musk ox from the side and water buffalo from straight on. But using goats to clean out the forest on a small parcel, 9 acres can be disastrous. Goats are browsers. They eat a little of everything until there is nothing left. Like all of us they start by first eating what they like best. Manzanita is at the top of the preference list. I do not know how they do it. The bark of a manzanita is as slippery as a waxed floor but a goat can strip the bark from a manzanita tree in a few minutes. They can kill a tree if they girdle it completely. Goats confined to a small area will strip the vegetation down to nothing destroying the forest of the future.