Billy’s Rent a Goat is about bringing the community together and getting them to interact and to educate people about their environment.

Educational School Visits Learning Outcomes and Benefits

Educational

  • To develop an understanding on important goat husbandry skills
  • To learn about the animal’s life cycle, such as gestation, birth, growth and death
  • To learn about the anatomy of goats and basic biological processes such as ruminant digestion
  • To engage with a farm animal and to apply text book biology to a real life mammal
  • To observe how goats interact, as individuals and as part of their herd
  • To gain an understanding of the behaviours of goats as prey animals and learn about their body language

Therapeutic Effects and Emotional / Social Learning Benefits:

  • The intrinsic nature of engaging with the natural environment can have a stress and anxiety reducing effect while fostering a sense of well being and relaxation
  • The experience takes students out of the classroom into the outdoors, thus creating an opportunity for experiental and positive learning, using all the five senses
  • To develop communication competencies such as partaking in a group discussion and developing observation skills
  • To gain a deeper understanding of the needs of others; to develop empathy
  • To understand the importance of respectful and responsible interactions with others
  • To learn about our own behaviours and social structures by reflecting on the animals behaviours, social interactions and group dynamic

Environmental learning and sustainable living

  • To understand that goat husbandry can be a pathway to a sustainable future
  • To watch a real life demonstration of how grazing goats help to manage invasive weeds while encouraging regrowth of native perennial plants
  • To learn that goats produce organic fertiliser that helps o restore soil
  • To understand that goat grazing is an excellent fossil fuel free, low impact, alternative farming method
  • All these learning outcomes can be used as starting points for teachers to deepen classroom based learning on a range of sustainability topics