Following on from all the recent goat-excitement… A few days ago, Steph from Sugargum Farm forwarded me a goaty plea from the suburbs of Melbourne.

Maja, a goat owner in the council area of Kingston, has been hassled by the council to get rid of Paddy (pictured above), a cute little goat she rescued. Her plea has rocketed around the online goat communities, as she asks sympathisers to sign her petition to let Paddy stay.

Here is the spiel from Maja’s petition callout:

We have 2 miniature goats as pets in a residential suburb of Melbourne. We have a permit for one of them, Pedro, who we have had for nearly 2 years. Our other boy, Patrick, was not purchased intentionally. We found him at 2 days old in a paddock near my work and his mother had abandoned him due to his being savagely attacked by a fox. He was distressed and in a lot of pain so we rescued him. 

Our vet had him on antibiotics for 2 weeks as he had pneumonia and nasty wounds from the fox attack. After about 3 months of 6 time a day feeds and many a hot water bottle filled to keep him warm as well as lots of love and care we have hand reared him back to health and he has become part of our family and an important companion for Pedro. 

We did the wrong thing and didn’t notify the council as firstly we didn’t know if he’d make it, and also we didn’t believe the council would understand out position and the seriousness of Patrick’s condition and make us re house him. Someone in the neighborhood has notified the council that we walk 2 goats in our area off a leash and this has prompted our local council to issue us with a notice to comply and remove Patrick within 2 weeks.

So far there are over 50 signatories urging the council to save Paddy!

I emailed Maja to let her know I was interested in anything to do with “goats-in-the-burbs”, and to ask for more details about her battle with the council. She sent me the story below, and a set of great photos of her two goat buddies.

Hi Lucas,

I just had a read through your website!
Love it!

We got goats because my husband has a similar obsession to you. there is just something about them that he loves! Next time you’re in Melbourne we’d love to have you over for a drink!

I have attached some photos of the boys and would love any help if you could offer it.

We are in the process of battling with the council at the moment. Pedro our eldest has a permit which we got by getting our immediate neighbours to sign a petition.

There are members of the council who seem compassionate about our situation but the young man who is dealing with our case directly seems to have it in for us so isn’t helping at all.

There is no law about keeping 2 goats. It just states that no domestic animal is to be kept in a property under an acre without a permit. 

We had some noise complaints when Pedro was younger but he grew out of bleating 🙂 and now I think its because someone said we walk them off a leash, but they are so well behaved they just run after us…

Thanks so much for contacting me, I really appreciate it and I do hope that any exposure about this will help us!

Kindest,
Maja

Here’s young paddy being led for a walk by his flatmate, Pedro. Aww, cute little fella, how could you turf a kid onto the streets, mean Mr Councilman?