The Difference Between Sheep And Goats

In our community we have a wonderful store that only sells food products made from goat's milk. Goat chocolates, goat cheese, goat milk, and goat butter are especially popular.

Someone asked me the other day if I knew the difference between goats and sheep. That's a good question since they are relatives.

The Blue and the Barbary sheep probably illustrate the difficulty in distinguishing the sheep from the goats. The Blue sheep (Bharal) is found in Asia, from eastern and northern Tibet to Szechwan. It is really brownish gray, becoming almost slate-color in winter. The color of the sides is margin-ed with black and the front legs are largely black in the males.

The horns of the rams are large and rounded, and they sweep outward and backward in an S-curve.

The males do not have a beard nor do they have a strong odor, but in other respects these sheep are very goat-like.

The Barbary sheep of North Africa is the only member of this group in Africa. Its horns are somewhat like those of the Bharal, but the throat, chest, and forelegs of the rams are covered with long hair.

The tail is long too, for a sheep, reaching almost to the hocks (heels). In European and American zoos the Barbary sheep are called "aoudads," but the people of their homelands call them "arui." In color they are yellowish brown, blending with the country in which they live.

Goats, close relatives of the sheep, usually live in rougher and higher country than the sheep. Few places are too inhospitable for these hardy animals. The males have beards and an unpleasant body odor.

Goat-keeping is probably as ancient as sheep keeping. In Asia, Africa and southern Europe, millions are kept for their flesh, their skins, and their milk. In English speaking countries they are not as popular, though leather from kids or goats is much used for gloves and shoes, depending upon fashion trends.

Nowadays, many Angora goats are being kept for their fleeces in some parts of the United States and Canada. There are great goat ranches in Texas, New Mexico, and other states.

These animals originated in Asia Minor and their long curly coats are known as mohair. They like rough land, where they feed on the shrubs. We use the mohair for textiles. The flesh of the kids is much liked for food. The skins also make leather, though it is not so good as that of the common goat. The long silky hair of the angora goat weighs about three pounds.

The Kashmir (Cashmere) breed has a thick coat of wool mixed with its hair.

The pashm, as this is called, can be combed out in summer and it is used to make the fine Kashmir shawls and a very soft cloth.

Flocks are kept in northern India and Tibet.

In Switzerland, one popular type of goat is the Toggenburn. Another popular breed there is the Saanen.

Both types of goats produce more than a gallon of milk at a time. The milk from these goats is often given to children and invalids for health benefits.

Domestic goats are known to have gone wild in many places around the world. This is especially true in the Canary Isles and also on Guadalupe, St. Helena, and Juan Fernandez and elsewhere.

On islands such as Guadalupe, which is small, dry, and uninhabited -- there vegetation may be almost completely destroy by the goats. On other islands they do less harm. Hunting these goats is considered a fine sport. Even experiences sportsmen find that bagging an old billy goat is difficult.

Tur are the closest goat allies of the sheep. Their home is in Caucasus Region, especially in Armenia.

The Spanish wild goats of the Pyrenees are their nearest kindred in the goat family, but the common wild goat, over a yard high and with wonderful horns curving in a noble sweep over fifty inches long, ranges from Europe into Asia. They are superb climbers, making dizzy leaps with perfect accuracy. Wild goats are grayish brown, with a dark brown stripe down the back and on the face.

The Ibexes are closely related to domestic goats. They have long, sharply curved horns, with strong cross-ridges on their front sides. In Europe these animals were almost extinct, but some varieties of Ibexes survived.

Some are found in the Ethiopian mountains, the Himalayas and their outer ranges, and in the Middle East. No animal can excel the Ibex as a mountain climber.

The Markhor, with long, spirally twisted horns, lives in the higher mountains of Northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

The Goat Antelopes are less goat like than the animals I just mentioned. For example, the Tahr have short curving horns and a shaggy coat of dull brown. They live in the Himalayas.

Then there are the Serow and Goral of China and southern Asia who live in rough country, often not far from the steaming jungle. The Serow is found in Japan and Sumatra as well as on the Asiatic mainland.

The Rocky Mountain Goat of North America is another goat antelope, nearer to the Serow than to the true goats. It is about the size of a common goat, but is stouter. It has slender, sharp pointed horns, which curve backwards.

The Rocky Mountain Goat is white in color, shaggy of coat and clumsy of build, but is a rival of the Ibex as a mountaineer. It lives high above timber lines from Mount Rainier to Alaska, where it may come down to a few feet above sea level.

The Chamois of the Alps, Pyrenees and other European and near Eastern mountains belongs also in this grouping of goat antelopes. Chamois make astonishing leaps and slides through treacherous snow. This is called "glissading, and it is one of the most thrilling sights to be seen in nature.

The Chamois, along with many other game animals have been taken to New Zealand, where there were no large animals before settlement by mankind. There, along with in the Southern Alps, they have done splendidly. Long may these daring and agile creatures live on.

Lastly, another group of these goat and sheep relatives are the Musk Ox and Takin.

The Musk-ox lives as far north as mankind, almost to the northernmost point of all land. during the great Ice Age, Musk-oxen roamed over Europe and Central United States, but now they live on the treeless tundra of the North, in Greenland and northern Canada. Don't look a thing like a goat to most people but they are actually in the goat family.

There are some in Alaska, but they were killed off and later re-introduced using stock from Greenland.

The Takin is found in the high mountains of western China and Tibet, and northern India. Most varieties are dull gray in color, but the Taken of West china is almost the color of gold. It may have been a skin of this animal which, passed from trader to trader, reached the Black Sea and gave rise to the legend of the Golden Fleece.