I Survived the Texas Goat-Belt

I had no idea that Texas leaned goat-heavy.

I made a trip down to Austin this past weekend and was surprised to see farm after farm just lousy with goats. There were so many goats that they looked like ants on a hill. Now, keep in mind that I'm using the word "goat" as a catch-all for sheep and whatever else falls into goat territory.

I was told the reason there were so many goats was to keep the grass down, but I saw no shortage of signs in small towns that proclaimed "BBQ & Goat Cookoff," so some of them were for eating as well. I also saw many signs promising "award-winning show goats."

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I thought all of this was a funny little observation on my part, but it's actually a real thing. I typed "why are there so many goats in Texas?" and I came across a map from the Washington Post that shows "literally every goat in the United States." The most goat-heavy area is the one in Texas that I like to call "The Goat Belt of Texas."

Goats gone wild starts around Coke County, Texas, which is pretty much the dead center of Texas, and starts wrapping up in Bandera and Uvalde counties. There's a county or two in Arizona that are also goat-heavy.

Judging by the map in general (because math is hard), it does look like Texas is the goat capital of the U.S., which I find odd because usually we brag about everything we're even kind of good at, yet I've never heard anything about goats.

So, goats are big in Texas. There's another thing you know.