Animal Diaries Archive

George And Lenny

3 December 2004

Meet two stars of our daily photo session – George and Lenny. These two little goats really enjoy the time of day when we open up one of the animal pens so that visitors can come in, pat the animals, sit down and have a photo taken. We use different animals each day but at the moment George and Lenny have more than their fair share of turns as they enjoy it so much (it could have something to so with the barley treats we use for photos!). George and Lenny are Saanen goats.

This is a dairy breed of goat that originally came from Switzerland. As George and Lenny are the same breed, colour and age they are very similar to look at, but there is an easy way to tell them apart. George has two "wattles" under his neck and Lenny doesn't. Wattles are little sacks of hair covered skin that hang under the neck of some goats. The presence of wattles tends to run in families rather than in breeds and there is actually no known purpose for them. Maybe they're just very original goat jewellery and we reckon that George's wattles make him look very cute!