Can a lawn mower be kept like a pet?

Around the middle of last year, two "functional" herbivores joined the garden.

I still remember the afternoon they arrived. I was in the field cutting grass, and my two elderly parents, who were out sightseeing, saw someone selling goats by the roadside and spent 5000 yuan to bring back two 4-month-old Alpine male goats. The young goats that had just stepped out of the crate were very awkward facing their new environment, pressing close together as if they were devoted brothers, looking so pitiful and cute. We immediately made collars for them and kept them like that for several days.

The young goats bleated "maa, maa," which attracted quite a few nearby neighbors who brought their children to watch. It just happened to go along with the chickens, ducks, geese and other animals in the garden, so the children were like visitors to a zoo, pointing at the animals and calling out their names, achieving an educational purpose. Especially when grandparents and grandchildren came together and introduced each animal using doubled-up nicknames, it made for quite an amusing scene.

But as the days went by, the cute young goats gradually turned into runaway lawn mowers. They often ran out the moment I opened the garden gate, showing no courtesy and no pickiness, eating every green thing they saw. In the vegetable garden, the sweet potato leaves, water spinach, lettuce, and kumquat trees were not spared, and they did not even leave the tree bark alone.

Even more absurd, at only a few months old they began to go into heat, the two male goats jumping back and forth, dashing wildly, and mounting each other... The ducks and geese in the same garden were fine, able to swim in the pond without being disturbed. The pitiful ones were the guinea fowl, who did not know where to hide and were chased by the two male goats in heat until they fell into the pond and died, or the hens who were so frightened they did not dare lay eggs.

Nearby neighbors repeatedly advised us to have them "castrated," and at first we all insisted on letting them grow up normally. But in the end, seeing that the two not only ate feed voraciously without putting on meat but were also mischievous and troublesome, when they were 6 months old we finally called in a veterinarian and turned them into goat eunuchs.

Having raised goats for the first time, I did not really know where to find a veterinarian, so I casually contacted an animal hospital in town. The veterinarian, originally specializing in cats and dogs, probably rarely handled cases involving non-pet animals. He casually quoted 1200 yuan, then went on at length about the procedure, the humanitarian spirit, animal welfare, and so on. At first hearing it sounded reasonable, but a young goat that had only cost 2500 yuan actually needed 1200 yuan for castration, which was truly unbelievable. After calling the township office to ask, the office introduced a veterinarian who specialized in this. On the phone, the veterinarian only said the fee was calculated by the hour, which I also found quite reasonable, so I immediately set a time for him to come to the field for the castration.

Before long, the veterinarian uncle arrived, disinfected the surgical tools, and gestured for me to position the goat's head straight, face down, holding it tightly with both hands and lifting its hind legs high, while my feet braced the goat's front legs, so that the goat was immobilized. Probably because the veterinarian uncle was afraid of being kicked, he did not come very close, only stretching out his left hand to adjust the goat's testicles, while the scalpel in his right hand made swift slicing sounds with two cuts. Because I was bracing it, the goat could only bleat. It did not really bleed much, and the testicles were removed from its body in just a few seconds. At that moment a thought flashed through my mind: what if I were that goat? Instantly a chill ran through my bones... yikes!! I immediately pulled myself away from that thought; it was too terrifying.

Finally, the veterinarian uncle applied medicine to the goat's wound and also gave them anti-inflammatory injections, then let them go eat grass nearby. The castration of the two goats was finished in less than 10 minutes, and I remember I only paid a little over 200 yuan in total. As for the goat testicles, I really had no interest in the ones taken out right before my eyes, so the veterinarian uncle took the two pairs of goat testicles and headed home, while the two goats returned to the shy manner they had when they first came to the garden, obediently eating grass and occasionally glancing at you with their big watery eyes.

After one night, I rushed to the garden in the early morning to check on the two goats, worried that they might feel inferior or uncomfortable, and specially brought corn feed to comfort them. But when I got to the garden, the scene before my eyes left me dumbfounded, and I cursed: "x, exactly how many pairs of testicles does a goat have, why are they still mounting each other?"

PS. From the perspective of animal husbandry, after animals take in feed, part of the energy is spent on growth and part on reproduction. Therefore, if you want to improve feed-to-meat efficiency, you must reduce unnecessary energy waste, and castration can make livestock grow faster.