@Bluey, few things scare me as much as snakes,. I wig over the pencil-size Northern brown and garter snakes in the yard. I’d faint if I saw your Slither McSlitherpants in a barn. That said, I’m curious. Does it have a name? How do the horses react? Have you seen it with prey? Does it have friends and family? How often is it … out and about?
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I used to sell my excess wether kids for butcher or pets, depending on what they were looking for. In quite a few cultures (mostly Hispanic in my area), slaughtering your own animals – particularly chickens and goats – is absolutely commonplace. A goat is a feast, in fact many goat raisers time breedings to coincide with the end of Ramadan, Mexican feast days, and the like, to get kids the right size/age for that market at the right time.
The OP may be horrified but that is where meat comes from, honey. Ditto dairy products and eggs; not from slaughter per se but meat animals are a necessary byproduct of those industries (not so much eggs because the male chicks are killed as soon as they hatch).
Myself, I would not be disturbed in the slightest, but I’d keep a wary eye on the OP, as she seems the type to intervene without consultation in anything she decided was ‘wrong’ and it could well be my horse next.
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We have black snakes in and around the barn. Some are impressively big! Horses are used to them and we are all ok as long as we are not surprised. (Can’t hear footsteps with a snake) However one summer day I had hosed my horse off in the wash stall. Just as we started out I heard a THUMP. A large snake had fallen from the rafters trying to get to a bird nest. A few seconds earlier and it would have fallen on my horse’s back!
The snake appeared uninjured …
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Well, the two black rat snakes that visit my chicken house every summer now have names… Mr. and Mrs. Slither McSlitherpants 
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I love snakes, I always have. They are beautiful creatures and very helpful with my vole problems. Half drunk cowboys, you can have those.
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They originally were domesticate for meat by Andean indigenous tribes. Only later were they pets.
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@msm, that story is the GREATEST. Also, I’m literally hyperventilating. Off to start a Tell Me Your Barn Snake Stories thread.
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I am told there is no such thing as just one snake. Yep, they have friends and family.
Don’t know if that is true of all species. But it is of rattlesnakes. If you have one rattlesnake, you have a rattlesnake family den somewhere nearby.
I have had a snake wrapped around the screaming bird it was murdering thump down from the rafters right in the barn aisle. More than once. Yes, along with slaughter, there are some animal things I can accept as reality but would prefer not to see or hear.
My this thread does wander! but returns to the main discussion. Sharks, snakes, cultural distance from food production, guinea pigs in the Andes …
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Nothing on this thread has been said that I could say better, so I’ll refrain from commenting on the original goat, but… I feel like an important note about this clip is that this is from the very first episode 
they really throw you in, such a good show
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I can kind of beat that. My barn help was opening the back aisle doors and a snake fell from the top ON him!
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We recently started it again from Season 1 and they really just throw you into the deep end!!!
Late to the party and hesitant to contribute, however, I think everyone is being pretty harsh to the OP, and it is not deserved.
If I heard a goat calling, and that was an oddity, of course I would go look. Maybe the goat was in trouble. But I am wired like that and always have been. A stop and help animals person, does just that. No matter the animal.
So if I find said goat in a shed tied up, with no explanation, I would definitely find out what was going on. In a what the hell sort of fashion. And I would have tried to buy the goat. Why? Because that’s just the way I am wired. I would try to save it. I just would. And if I couldn’t, well that’s life too but I tried.
Folks, of course animals are slaughtered all the time. Of course lots of things in nature eat meat. Not going against the waves really. I don’t begrudge anything that eats animals.
Just wanting to save a goat if I can, because that’s who I am. I don’t give a fig about the cultural practices of a human, I care about the goat, and would like to give the critter a longer life. That’s all. It’s about the goat, people. Only the goat.
Now, tis the season to be cranky, I know. And before anyone asks, yes I am a vegetarian. Since a very small child.
And also, had a similar goat experience. Went to a local show around age 9 and there was a goat for the goat tying contest. They were going to eat him after.
I won 25 dollars in a bareback on a dollar class, bought the goat, and then rode home with it following me…being followed by the loose neighborhood dogs. I will never forget the look on my mother’s face when I finally arrived home with a goat and all those dogs.
I ask that you be kinder to the poster, there are lots of animal loving weirdos out there, and many would have gone back later and stolen the goat. She’s not even in that cray cray bracket.
Edit to add you can see by the price of the goat and number of bareback entries, it was a long time ago!
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A bit late to the party…read to post 200+
It may be a poor choice of words but when you say investigate is sounds like you went away from the designated area you are paying to use. I wouldn’t have to investigate in the tack shed I could just go there.
You don’t mention the BO attending or helping until much later in the thread, it sounded like you asked her after you retied and watered. I am curious how you retied, was the goat tied so long that there was a danger of it getting tangled so you tied appropriately shorter?
I have boarded at a few barns, while it was never specifically spoken out loud it seemed clear to me I had access to the water room, the hay shed and the riding/stable arena, not the sheds over there.
Where I live checking out those sheds would be called trespassing.
Plenty of times animals are on a restricted diet for medical reasons, wouldn’t that have been the first jump, find BO, question and let her deal with situation? Maybe the goat was being quarantined for a potential infectious disease? The people thinking they were being discrete keeping the goat locked in a shed awaaay from the boarders. People from out of town sometimes bring the sick animal to a closer location to the vet. Vet being able to work in a 15 min drive easier than an hour drive,
Taking matters into your own hands, short of dire medical emergency, seems presumptuous and judgmental.
Was this the first time you were close and personal to the idea that animals provide the meat we eat? If so I can understand an emotional response.
Not a reason in itself to move barns imo
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I had a cleaning buddy last summer.
image
My barn owner has goats too. Just pets.
My horse has had to get used to all manner of critters. Deer, bunnies, goats, and all manner of birds (she doesn’t like birds). All in all she has adjusted quite well.
Doesn’t has a name, is a grandchild of this one that lives under the porch.
That bench is 5’.
Other picture is bull snake eggs, leathery and soft.
Rattlers give birth to live ones:
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Love the snek and the doves cooing!
$40 for a meat goat is incredibly cheap. I don’t think a single one of ours have ever left the property for less than $250. Most of ours are closer to the $400 range, with some exceptional breeding stock selling for well north of that.
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You sound like you would be OK if OP had stolen the goat. If not OK, you would find it understandable.
Not cool.
Stealing food from people less fortunate than you, and who are in a position of service to you and your privileged hobby, not cool at all.
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@colorfan, the person you are replying to is not the OP. But OP has more (or less) answered those questions. She expected more people to be outraged as she was, but many people on this board have a more practical (in my opinion) view of the situation: In many countries, individuals are “closer” to their food source. Slaughter, while not particularly pleasant, can be humane and those animals can live a lovely life and be none the wiser to their doom. The workers (NOT the grooms!) didn’t see it as an issue, and based on what we know and can reasonably guess, no harm would have come aside from the goat itself.
If the idea of an animal being humanely slaughtered by individuals, regardless of their cultural background, bothers you to that degree, then your own moral code should dictate that you are vegetarian. Not saying all meat eaters should be able to kill and process their own meat, but yes, you should have a general level of comfort about it. If you are willing to eat meat that was most likely not ethically slaughtered, or treated particularly well (hard to say if you don’t know where your meat is coming from), but you object to individuals who buy a healthy-looking animal and slaughter it themselves, that doesn’t make you sensitive, that makes you ignorant. If just the idea of the process makes you THAT queasy, you should refrain from eating meat, full stop.
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poker face, not sure how to fix my mistake other than deleting.
Were you addressing me when you asked if animals being humanely slaughtered bothered me?
If yes, certainly not, if I suggested that somehow I really should delete my post. This is how this whole day is going, should just go to bed and try again. 
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