A curious goat pokes his head through a fence Friday afternoon near Vader.
Thomas Hicker pets a goat through a fence Friday afternoon near Vader.
Steve and Julia feed goats through a fence Friday afternoon near Vader.
Julia Galer sports a mask while feeding goats through a fence Friday afternoon near Vader.
As forest fires continue to burn much of the West Coast, Vader couple Julia and Steve Galer are fostering nine goats who escaped the flames in Oregon. Their neighbor alerted them to the situation a few weeks ago, and asked them to step in.
“The response was pretty immediate,” Julia said. “We said ‘yeah, we’ll take them.’”
They were told that the goats belonged to a family south of Salem, whose house and barn were destroyed by the fires. After the homeowners evacuated, someone was able to run back and rescue 10 goats and some pigs. One goat is still recovering from burns, according to the Galers. In Oregon, more than a million acres have burned, and 10 people have died.
Before driving down to the Oregon State Fairgrounds, where the goats — and countless other rescued animals — were being housed, the duo had to figure out how to even get them home.
“I said ‘OK, we have an open-bed pickup truck and an open-side trailer. We can’t be getting nine goats,’” Steve said.
But Steve quickly modified the trailer to fit the animals. He described the final open-air situation as looking like dogs hanging out in the back of a pickup.
Now, the plan is to keep the uniquely-named goats (including Waffles, Cow, Llama, and Goose) until their owners can start rebuilding. Steve and Julia don’t know how long that may take.
For now, they’re holding the animals in a separate pen from their own small herd of goats. The new crowd is too skittish for company.
“They were just shell shocked,” Julia said of the new goats. “They were so skittish and scared.”
Most of their herdmates didn’t make it, Julia said, so it’s easy to understand why the animals are still on-edge.
When Julia and Steve got to the fairgrounds to pick them up, they described a chaotic and desperate situation.
“We drove down there on Wednesday and we were just amazed. It was wall-to-wall animals. Sheep and goats and chickens and geese and dogs and cats,” Julia said.
The animals were crowded together on concrete floors, Steve remembered.
“For what they were doing, they’re well taken care of, but it’s not an ideal situation,” he said.
Steve himself has little experience with farm animals. He says Julia is always the one to bring animals to the property, and he goes along with it. Julia grew up spending summers on the 5-acre property they now own. Back then, it was a 75-acre parcel owned by her grandparents, who had a milking operation with 30 goats. Having grown up around the animals, the nine newcomers aren’t as big of a shift for her as they are for Steve.
Julia and Steve say the goats are personable, and act just like dogs. When asked if it will be hard to give the herd back, Steve said they’ve enjoyed the goats — “but they have a home.”
