Science

Goats in the News

69 Comments

An Irishman says a ewe on his farm has given birth to a rare Goat-Sheep.

The animal is exactly what you might imagine – the product of a union between a goat and a sheep. According to the BBC article and Wikipedia, such offspring usually don’t survive.

This one, however, is thriving. He’s faster than a typical sheep, and woolier than a normal goat.

Of course when a story like this surfaces on the Internet, alarm bells go off and a skeptical reader looks for signs of a ruse. And this tale has them.

For one thing, the farmer’s name is Paddy Murphy. I’m not saying such a name is unlikely – far from it. I would argue the opposite – Paddy Murphy is a go-to Irish name that any writer from The Onion would choose.

Paddy Murphy’s would also be a logical first choice for anyone with enough cash and bad taste to open a phony Irish pub in Coon Rapids. And sure enough, the farmer owns a pub, (Murphy’s, naturally), though his is in County Kildare.

Yet I believe this story, because I love the odd duck and pull for the underdog. Which would be the Underduck – a sad-eyed and lovable but highly temperamental hairy billed beast. And the story originates with an unimpeachable source – The Irish Farmers Journal.

No one would make that up.

What sort of hybrid are you?

69 thoughts on “Goats in the News”

  1. Morning all. I’m going to check back in later… I need inspiration from the rest of the troop to answer today’s question!

    If you’re FB friends w/ BiB.. check it out, the last of this year’s babies came last night!

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  3. Good morning. I’m half Dutch and half English. what does that make me? Some kind of mongrel as far as I can tell.

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  4. Ewe got to be kidding me, right? You’re not really wondering about my ancestry, are you? I’m one of those hybrids that has within me enough contradictory and conflicting traits to create several quite different people. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to incorporate them into a more or less harmonious whole, some days I’m more successful than others.
    The temperature is rising and I feel a celebratory Irish jig coming on if I can get these clumsy Danish feet to cooperate.

    OT – Talking about dancing. Tonight at the Ginkgo, April Verch, a talented Canadian Fiddler and stepdancer will be performing. She’s worth checking out if you don’t already have other plans.

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  5. the hybrid that i am is like to coat of many colors made up of scraps and bits of time and history that i have experienced and read and dreamt of along the path of this life. the threads that bind these scraps are the findings form along the way i am the stone soup of the journey so far. it feels like i have just started but i am further down the path that i would like to know I suspect…hybrid is a term for flowers that get pollinated from multiple life forms. i have been touched by multiple life forms and am indeed a hybrid continuing to evolve but a little further along that a year ago a decade ago generation ago. i am a ways down the road and cant feel bad about the opportunities missed but need to pay attention to the ones in front of me today.
    irish indain polish welsh french may be a labeling index for reference but the learning of the men and women who came before and stirred the curiosities in my predecessors that inspired me is more appropriate to reference than the nationalities involved. ed rogers was an indian but the approach to life was the inspiration not the ancestry. the indian part of the equation kept him pushing for the next bit, instead of succumbing he used it as a stepping stone to achieve greatness and to live the life he chose. i talked to a turk last week who was inspiring.my son in law form kosovo is an nspiration, i guess nationalaity is a tag but the spirit is where i look for the influence and the stamp.

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      1. We might agree. I try to be an optimist as much as possible. Then the spoilsport voice of bitter experience starts jeering my high hopes, and I have to reduce expectations.

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  8. I’ve always considered myself homogenized. A little of this; a little of that. I recall feeling excluded when an occasional group “ice breaker” was to share our heritages/roots since I had nothing special to share. For the earlier years of childhood, I made up that I was a descendant of Daniel Boone since my grandmother’s maiden name was Boone. Frankly, I didn’t even know who Daniel Boone was – all I knew was that he was famous for something.

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    1. Cb, of all the adjectives that I can think of, homogenized is not one I would have ever thought of to apply to you. From some of the outfits I’ve pictures of you in, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that you are a descendant of Daniel Boone.

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    2. You are a descendant of Daniel Boone. But so is just about everybody else. The early Boones had astonishingly large families, so most of America is related to them. I don’t know how they found time to build forts or hunt bears, given how much time they obviously spent shagging each other.

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      1. I haven’t figured that out yet. Have a listen to my music and you can peek at my soul. Access it through my web page and if you click on the album cover it takes you to iTunes. Click on the album cover and you can sample the music for free.
        Leslie

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  10. Glad to say I’m not a hybrid of titanium and bone-muscle. Hope that never happens. And certainly not looking to get a pig valve for my heart.

    What best describes me is a hybrid left-brain right brain. Meaning I’m equally at home being analytical and number and logic oriented as well as an artistic, “sensitive new age guy.”

    **Cue Christine Lavin!**

    Chris in Owatonna
    (Whose too lazy to put up a link of her on youtube. 🙂 )

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    1. Well, being a titanium/bone-muscle hybrid myself, Chris, I can attest to the fact that it beats being in pain all the time. Just call me the bionic woman.

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        1. I know, Chris. I have the lower back thing yet to deal with, not sure titanium is the answer to that. Don’t know what is.

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    2. that makes you right brained. i was told and found it true that us lefties can do many things righties can do but righties can only do righty stuff, they have no clue on the artistic end. some of them think they do but htats ony because they dont have a clue. the only thing made for a leftie is the flush lever on the toilet.

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        2. you can not know you are a lefty because the world is right handed and when you are 1 or 2 you get handed a crayon and a spoon and it gets put in your right hand just because. no ill intent and you look around and try to do what is expected. a lot of lefties eat and write right handed. times are changing but being a leftie was very unusual wen i was a kid. lots of comments. i hear there are about 7% of the world who identifies themselves as left handed but that in fact it may be closer to 40-50 %

          the way you check is difficult to describe because it works best if you dont know how it ends before you begin.
          choose an object in the distance like a clock acroos the room or a branch on a tree across the yard.
          take your hand and make a circle with your thumb and index finger and hold it out at arms length and get the object lined up in the circle. now is the tough part. do not do not do not move your arm hadn or head. close your right eye and see if you still se the object. now dont move your head arm or hand and cswitch eyes. if you do it right the circle lines up with one eye and the other eye does not see the object. left eye left left handed right brained. knowing it in advance affects your test. when you have your daughter do it dont tell her what you are doing.
          i like doing the circle with two hands with thumbs at the bottom and fingers going up at 45’s making a little triangle. it seems to keep you from altering the outcome in advance by instinctively choosing with right or left hand.

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      2. Interesting, tim. Actually, I’m even a bit weirder than that because I’m what I call bi-dexterous, meaning I do some things right-handed–throwing, hitting a baseball,serves and overheads in tennis, and golf swing. But I kick left footed, eat left handed, write left handed, hit ground strokes in tennis left handed. Not sure how all those relate to left and right brain functions, though.

        Chris

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        1. In my book, Chris, that makes you certifiably weird! 🙂 Not necessarily unlovable, but weird.

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        2. Interesting, Chris. I’m left-handed, but cannot use scissors left-handed. Pretty sure that’s because back in my grade school days (you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth), the schools did not have left-handed scissors. I must have done more cutting at school than at home, because my mom was enlightened and bought me left-handed scissors, but since I had to cut right-handed at school, I wasn’t able to use the lefty scissors at home. I batted left-handed as a kid and, for a while, threw right-handed, but taught myself to throw left-handed so I could be a lefty all the way – I write and eat left-handed and considered myself a lefty. I never would teach myself to kick left-footed, though, but since that’s not my hand, I still consider myself left-handed.

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        3. I tried to use scissors right-handed but gave up pretty fast and just force myself to awkwardly use them left-handed. But I do own a pair of left-handed Fiskars that I keep in my desk). I can’t even throw left-handed as well as “a girl” (No offense intended ladies, just using a soon to be discarded
          stereotype from my generation for clarity’s sake).

          My dad encouraged me to become a switch-hitter in baseball but I failed miserably at that too. He figured if I could become a switch hitting catcher I’d be a shoe-in for the Bigs. But I insisted on pitching and batting righthanded and as a result never even made my high school baseball team. 😦

          Chris

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        4. easy left handed people do right handed things no problem. right handed people only do things right handed . if you do anything left handed you are left handed

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        5. a lot of people who do everything right handed shoot pool and guns left handed. a camera tells you which eye you want to look with if the viewfinder isnt way the heck over on the right side predetermining the choice for you

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        6. Tim, I think the test you describe only identifies the dominant eye and is not a test of right/left handedness or right/left brain hemispherical dominance.

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        7. typo in one of my comments (who knows if this will show up in the right place): should be “I never COULD teach myself to kick left-footed.” not “would.”

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        8. I tend to agree with Steve. But then, my left eye has much, much worse vision than my right eye – I think as a result to an injury to my eye when I was 12 or so – so even though I am left-handed, I doubt that test would show me as left-eyed/left-handed/right-brained. I did take some internet quiz to determine if I was left-brained or right-brained and was strongly right-brained. I liked the description they gave me at the end of the quiz – it made it seem like the way I think and process information could be a good thing.

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      3. Oh, come on, tim. Righties “have no clue on the artistic end”? Really? Middle daughter is about the most artistic person I know – from a very young age – and she is right-handed. How do you explain that?

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        2. Well, maybe. Being left-handed myself, you can bet I never put the spoon or crayon in her right hand instead of her left, but let her choose. She was (is) strong-minded and was determined to feed herself at a young age, first with her fingers, then with a spoon. Wouldn’t stand for me to spoon-feed her. I let all my kids choose what handedness they were and they are all righties, at least if we’re going by appearances. 😦

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      4. I am right-handed, left-eye dominant, and when I took a quiz to find out if I’m right- or left-brained, it came out exactly split between the two.

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  11. I think I am some sort of weird hybrid science minded and trained with a career in the arts. This has meant at various times that I either have a lot of small talk at parties, or absolutely none at all 🙂

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    1. MiG, I think the hybrid mind of arts and sciences is how a lot of us end up in technical theater. It requires a certain amount of creativity, engineering, artistic flair and physics to build costumes and sets or light a stage.

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  12. Greetings from SWMN. I am an overwelmed hybid of daughter and adult. My parents are graciously leaving it all up to me to run the show here. What does Barb in Blackhoof think of the goat sheep.

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    1. i think i would trust you too renee. with everything but the soup spoons
      .
      barb abandoned ship a while back she may just have to live in blackhhof in ignorance. i used to be on her facebook postings list. i dont know if i just get too many faceboks these days or if you have to check in at certain intervals to stay on the update status but i dont see her stuff anymore.i looked for goats in blackhoof and cant find them. whats the name of her farm again?

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      1. meadowwild, I think.

        The farm has it’s own facebook page and if you “like” that, you get all the latest little goatlings. More cute than one person should be able to stand, but they are goats, so that makes it all ok.

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      2. Thanks, tim. I became overwhelmed going through the drawers and cupboards in my parents’ condo. I now have lots of soup spoons. Thank goodness they got rid of lots of stuff the past couple of years. Hope I don”t lose these. Lots of cute calves in the pastures around here kicking up their heels.
        Mainly black white-face and angus with the occasional Herford. Aren’t the black white-faces hybrids of Hereford snd Angus?

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        2. Morning-
          If the Angus bull got in with the Holsteins I’d get black / white face calves, too. And the boys were highly desired at the sales barn.
          I tried milking some of the heifers…. they weren’t that great of a milk cow.

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        2. Dang it; hate it when I do that. “You’re”. I’m not sure I know what you mean by ‘Out to Pasture’? Or maybe I’m just distracted and missing the joke. That’s entirely possible.

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  13. Besides being a norwegian/Swedish-welsh hybrid, I a combination of someone who wants to conform (from my father) and be different (from my mom). Makes for many conflicted moments.

    OT – Posting from Santa Fe, where unfortunately it got down to 28 last night… supposed to warm up later in the week.

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  14. I’m a hybrid when it comes to body shape. I inherited skinny ankles and wrists from my dad and large calves (calves, not goats) from my mom. No matter how much weight I gain, my wrists and ankles stay skinny. I can’t explain to you how ridiculous it looks to have quite fat calves, but ankles that look like they belong to someone who weighs 100 pounds. Same with my wrists, They look like they belong to someone who’s really, really skinny, whereas my upper arms and shoulders, well, let’s say they don’t look at all like they belong to a skinny person.

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    1. We have very large doves that I think are hybrids of mourning doves and Eurasian collared doves. They have a raucaus call and hang sround all winter.

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  15. OT – Jesse Winchester is an extraordinary American singer/songwriter who moved to Canada early in his career to avoid the draft and the war in Vietnam. He moved back to the US in 2002. In 2011 he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, but had seemingly recovered and resumed touring. He became ill again earlier this year, and I learned earlier today that he is now in hospice care. He is a principled man, a gentle soul and a talented songwriter. I’ll miss him.

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    1. i traveled with jessie winchester tapes back in the hippy days and have always loved his stuff. that damn cancer is a shame. i am glad he got to make his mark. great stuff

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    2. While I haven’t been able to confirm it through any formal source, I understand that Jesse has slipped the bounds of earth. RIP Jesse.

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