TIL: Today I Learned

[Hrothbern]

It's a pretty old animal husbandry term.

I'm not grokking. Other than it was originated using religious language by people likely of that religion, how is it offensive?

What you linked is what I was referring to.

Here in NL we had long ago the profession of duck hunters who caught ducks in a kind of cage with nets over a small canal and used tame ducks to attract wild ducks flying by to a wider sector of that same canal.
The tame ducks were trained to swim to the cage after blowing on a whistle, and the wild ducks joining them were easily caught.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, timeworn perhaps, though I kind of prefer timetested.

 

[Farm Boy]

Doubleposted.

 

[Takhisis]

TIL
That goats were seen by christian culture more as bad, demonic, judas, lust
And sheep as good, the ram honorable
Quite a clash with the Viking culture where the goat was good.

Yeah, well, all animals had ‘virtues’and ‘vices’ adscribed to them in a manner that reminds me mostly of Egyptian mythology (I recommend Eternal Egypt by Pierre Montet) back in those time. E.g. Christianity suddenly ahd a ban on eating horse meat because Germanic paganism had horse sacrifices. Nowadays Christians have no compunction about eating horse meat.

Some theologians have said that the laws of kashrut are symbolic in character: Kosher animals represent virtues, while non-kosher animals represent vices.
​

And Christianity still is, to a large degree, a sort of neo-Judaism.

What you linked is what I was referring to.

Here in NL we had long ago the profession of duck hunters who caught ducks in a kind of cage with nets over a small canal and used tame ducks to attract wild ducks flying by to a wider sector of that same canal.
The tame ducks were trained to swim to the cage after blowing on a whistle, and the wild ducks joining them were easily caught.

I was going to quote you in the TIL thread, then realised that this was the TIL thread.

 

[Zkribbler]

TIL

How many scientists spent how many hours staring at blue whales butts to ascertain this fact?

 

[Takhisis]

This is not a politics thread but we're still talking about asses. Fun times!

 

[Dachs]

How many scientists spent how many hours staring at blue whales butts to ascertain this fact?

Not nearly enough. The evidentiary basis for the meme is slim. Scientists - the few that have ever come close to talking about whale fart sizes, anyway - even disagree over whether whales fart at all.

Also, ifunny is the worst.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not offensive, just weird.
Also, maybe the people who wrote the Bible had ulterior motives when they named that chatacter Judas. Whn I publish my edition I'll change the name to Gerhard, after Gerhard Schröder.

There's an earlier Old Testament character named Judah (one of Joseph's brothers; there's a side story about him and marrying his late brother's wife).

Doubleposted.

You can delete your own posts, so there's no need for unnecessary double posts or asking for a moderator to delete it for you.

As for goats... they're good, useful animals. My grandparents kept a couple of goats when I was very young, because I couldn't tolerate cow's milk. I did fine with goat's milk (no conscious memories of this, but there is an old photo of my grandfather with the two goats, obviously taken at the acreage where I grew up).

And some municipalities now use goats as species-specific lawn/garden weeders. Train them to eat a specific type of unwanted plant, turn them loose, and it's a lot less trouble than weeding by hand or using weed-killer.

 

[Hrothbern]

And some municipalities now use goats as species-specific lawn/garden weeders. Train them to eat a specific type of unwanted plant, turn them lose, and it's a lot less trouble than weeding by hand or using weed-killer.

That's a nice to know !

IDK if that really goes so far as that you can use them at a grand scale to weed out weed in bio-farming...

 

[Birdjaguar]

We had 2 goats in a wooded half acre pen for a number of years. They cleared out everything green within 7 feet of the ground and a neck length outside the fence. They will eat kudzu and poison ivy. We could even take them on walks.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That's a nice to know !

IDK if that really goes so far as that you can use them at a grand scale to weed out weed in bio-farming...

Well, the beauty of this is that you can adjust the number of goats as needed for the space you're trying to clear.

Back when my dad and I were still living in our house, we had a yard that needed mowing. Since I wasn't very mobile, that was my dad's job, and there were times when I'd mention, "The lawn needs mowing." He'd mumble something, and several days would go by.

When the grass got high enough to where the city bylaw enforcers might be paying a visit, I told him, "You should ask your friend who runs the Greek restaurant if we can borrow one of his goats before he kills it" (goat was sometimes on the menu there).

That usually got a laugh and he'd go mow the lawn. So it became family code that when I told him it was time to borrow a goat, it meant "it's time to mow the lawn."

We had 2 goats in a wooded half acre pen for a number of years. They cleared out everything green within 7 feet of the ground and a neck length outside the fence. They will eat kudzu and poison ivy. We could even take them on walks.

I can see it now... you and Mrs. Birdjaguar strolling down a country lane, each leading a goat on a leash while holding hands and you reciting poetry...


Which is sorta similar to something my parents did one summer evening before their divorce... except it was geese (and my dad wasn't into poetry). My dad had an automotive repair business at the acreage, and back in the '60s he didn't always get paid in cash. One customer paid him in geese - 3 adults and a gosling. Well, we ended up making pets of them rather than killing and eating them, and they did make good "watchdogs" - no stranger dared get out of the car until the geese had been called off, as they had the run of the front driveway adjoining their shed.

So one night my mom and dad decided to go for a walk along the country road. What they didn't realize is that the geese decided to go with them... one after another in a straight line. The gander, two adult females, and the gosling.

One of the neighbors saw the whole thing and thought it was so funny, they told my parents about it. I wasn't there to see any of this, since my grandparents and I were in British Columbia, spending the summer at the cabin on Okanagan Lake. But I can imagine how it must have looked.

 

[Hrothbern]

Train them to eat a specific type of unwanted plan

Is there anything on that training, how specific that is possible ?
For example: that they eat everything except the spinach in a big plot of spinach

 

[Snerk]

Is there anything on that training, how specific that is possible ?
For example: that they eat everything except the spinach in a big plot of spinach

Perhaps that can be done though I remain slightly sceptical. Goats are smart, persistent and highly agile. If the spinach is tasty (which it is), they'll probably get to it one way or another. My sister kept a few goats for a while and I spent a lot of time helping out. Besides being just lovely and super fun creatures, and they will indeed keep all of your shrubbery down. They're not too interested in pure grass though. You need a grazer for that, like a sheep.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Is there anything on that training, how specific that is possible ?
For example: that they eat everything except the spinach in a big plot of spinach

I don't know offhand. But this isn't a solution that would work for the average residential gardener. If you want to clear specific unwanted plants from a field, or maybe from an orchard, goats would work fine. One of the points made is that they're also used in places where using a mower would be unsafe due to the ground not being level. Goats don't run the risk of tipping over when they turn a corner on sloping ground.

 

[Mouthwash]

TIL I learned Alexa has no opinion on most pundits, but really likes Ben Shapiro.

Can anyone confirm this?

 

[CKS]

I don't know offhand. But this isn't a solution that would work for the average residential gardener. If you want to clear specific unwanted plants from a field, or maybe from an orchard, goats would work fine.

If the plants you want to clear from your orchard are the trees, it will work great. I really don't see training them to only eat what you want them to eat working out well, unless the other stuff around is really not too tasty. They are really smart, but they are pretty independent.

We got some goats when I was a kid, as my dad heard they'd eat poison ivy. They will, but it is pretty far down on their list of favorite foods. Much higher up are spruce and poplar. They ate the bottom 8 feet or so of my parents' big spruce, climbing up on the car to get as much as possible. Saplings they would push over, walking up the trunk to get all the leaves.

We ended up with a lot of them as they are really nice animals and very social. First we had one, and she cried all day unless someone sat with her. Then we got another for company. Then we got seven more and two bales of hay for the price of two bales of hay, as my dad couldn't resist a bargain. They were great fun, even if we had to get up at 5:30 to milk them. It was hard to leave them when we moved.

 

[Lexicus]

TIL Jordan Peterson recently shared a Prager U climate denial video on Twitter. All you people who were defending him a few weeks ago, you can leave your apologies in my inbox.

 

[Synobun]

TIL Jordan Peterson recently shared a Prager U climate denial video on Twitter. All you people who were defending him a few weeks ago, you can leave your apologies in my inbox.

Clean your room, Lexicus.

 

[Mouthwash]

Aren't those the guys who argued that British colonialism was right and moral?

I've not given up on Peterson, he's one of the last people pushing back against the liberal nomenklatura.

 

[Lexicus]

Aren't those the guys who argued that British colonialism was right and moral?

Prager U? No idea, they're a propaganda outfit so treating what those videos say as "arguments" is a bit naive/credulous imo