Fainting Goats, by Bruce Nunn

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Fainting Goats: A bizarre animal oddity comes home to Nova Scotia

by Bruce Nunn

I met Pamela at the Christmas Parade in charming Chester Basin, on the south shore. Pamela is short and cute with a pretty face and an odd physical condition. Pamela is a goat. A goat that faints. She is one of many fainting goats all over the world that originated in Nova Scotia over a century ago.

Yeah, I know. I didn’t believe it either until I saw it happen. At the starting site of the small town parade, trucks with floats attached revved their motors in the cold, morning air. There, I met Pamela the fainting goat and her cheerful owner, Debra Zong. They were getting ready.

“Yes, she’s a lot nervous,” said Debra to my first question.

My next question, obviously, was “What happens to a fainting goat when she’s nervous?”

“She stiffens up and falls over,” said Debra, “in a ‘faint,’ as they call it.”

I smirked and looked askance.

Debra smiled too but she continued. “It’s called myotonia, a stiffening of the muscles almost like muscular dystrophy,” she said. “She stiffens up and falls over.”

With that, my smirk exploded to convulsive laughter. Debra joined in, chuckling along, but she stuck to her story: Goats that stiffen and fall over like freshly cut Christmas trees. Timberrr!

How oddly fascinating yet strangely repulsive.

But—get this—these fainting goats were bred to do that. Long ago, goat breeders thought they could put the odd muscular condition to good use. They used the animals as scape goats. Actually they were more like bait goats.

“They were bred to put out with the sheep,” said Debra.

“When the coyotes chased the sheep, the goats would faint and the coyotes would eat the goats and the sheep would get away.”

These are actual goat facts. I kid you not. I’ve checked other sources. Debra is not making this up.

Now, what triggers it? “A good noise and she’ll go down,” said Debra. “Her legs will stiffen straight and if she’s moving she’ll stop dead and fall over and look like a sawhorse.”

Good heavens! Stiffened sawgoats!

“It’s funny when you come out in the morning,” said Debra who owns a small herd of these scaredy goats. “They’ll do this even if they’re excited or happy. You come out with your feed bucket and they’re all tumbling over; this one gets the next one nervous and they’re all falling over like dominoes, right?”

At this point Debra was laughing as loud as I was at the image of Pamela and her pals, like overturned coffee tables with hair.

“It’s rather funny…you’re trying to feed these animals upside-down!”

The term ‘fainting goat’ is technically a misnomer. According to the experts at The Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown, PEI, myotonia is a naturally occurring muscular condition, a protein abnormality, triggered by being startled or excited. It just looks like fainting.

The fainting goat capital seems to be the state of Tennessee, U.S.A. Many goaters there belong to the IFGA: The International Fainting Goat Association. They have a website and everything. Check it out. Their logo is hilarious: A goat on its back, leg straight to the sky.

Oral history has it that a man named John Tinsley brought the first myotonic or fainting goats to Tennessee in the 1880s. He brought them, they say, from Nova Scotia.

In 1991, The Economist published the story of a Tennessee man named Mayberry who bought the first fainting goats from that Nova Scotian stranger for $36. And, a few years ago, Debra Zong bought her fainting goats in the United States and had them shipped over the border, back to their homeland, Nova Scotia. The event meant so much in fainting goat circles that it was written up in an American fainting goat newsletter called—are you ready for this?—The Nervous News. The fainting goats had returned to their promised land!

I thought a loud Christmas parade would be the ideal trigger for a nervous four-legged fainter. The bells, sirens, band music and cheering would surely be faint-inducing.

Parade organizer Nancy Guest was prepared with a wheelbarrow for Pamela to ride in. It wouldn’t do for her to suffer a stiffening muscle spasm on foot in front of the marching team of oxen. But, miraculously, Pamela was unaffected by the din of the parade; completely faint-free!

So much for my hour-long drive to witness fainting first hand.

But I wasn’t giving up. I had to see this. After the parade, another hour’s drive on old roads brought me to Debra Zong’s animal farm in St. Croix. I was determined to see a fainting goat in full flop. She has a small herd of fainters and, sure enough, I did witness one goat fall over, legs outstretched, muscles tightened, sawhorse style. Amazing!

It lasted about ten seconds, then the goat was up and gambolling gaily again. They do exist! Yes, Virginia, there is a fainting goat. And Debra Zong’s little bleaters are official, original, repatriated, Nova Scotian fainting goats!

A native of Nova Scotia, Bruce Nunn is a writer and broadcaster with a passion for provincial history. Go buy his fun-and-funny books over at Nimbus Publishing.

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