As regards lighthouse animals, are these the GOAT?

Goats at Ballycotton August 2022

"In view of the difficulty experienced at many lighthouse stations in obtaining supplies of fresh milk for young children, the Commissioners desire to draw the attention of their Lightkeepers to the desirability of keeping goats wherever practical."

So begins an Irish Lights memo to staff, dated 25th September 1918. It goes on to recommend the Anglo-Nunian and the Toggenberg breed to keepers, rather than the 'ordinary Irish goat' because the milk yield is higher and they give milk for ten months of the year. However, the excited keeper is warned, goats of the better class (I kid you not) aren't nearly as hardy as the 'ordinary Irish goat' and at the first sign of a chill wind they start complaining that they want to be stall-fed.

Keepers, said the memo, who are finding it difficult finding a good stud goat in the vicinity, should write to the Honorary Secretary of the Irish Goat Society in Trillick, county Tyrone, who presumably stepped up to the plate himself.

Goats on Skellig Michael circa 1900

Lightkeepers and goats, goes the old musical hall song, go together like a horse and carriage, though things didn't always work out for the best for the goats. Take young Annie O'Leary's account of a terrible storm on Inishtearaght, co. Kerry, in 1894, when families still lived on that barren rock.

"It was a terrible destruction. the houses were washed nine feet with sea, also the lighthouse. All the goats out of forty died of starvation, because the grass was swept off with the gale, and 31 kids, all but one little kid, her name was Gin." 

One fervently hopes that the kids she refers to were baby goats.

A semi-feral goat on Dalkey Island with the Muglins lighthouse behind

Things weren't a lot better for goats in the 1940s, particularly on the rock stations on the west coast. Take this example from the Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner of 13th March 1943, where the reporter, (who, incidentally, seems to have trouble with the concept of 'an island,') explains why marooned keepers on Eagle Island will never starve to death.

"Eagle Island is not in reality an island, but a tall, irregular strip of rock jutting up in the Atlantic and is uninhabited, save for the lighthouse keepers.

'The lighthouse keepers' food problem on Eagle Island is not yet regarded as critical, as many wild goats graze on its slopes and, when short of food, the lighthouse keepers kill and eat them."

The goats didn't always come off worse though. In 1913, poor Denis Connolly fell to his death on the Tearaght as he rounded up the goats for milking. They must have been a different breed to the goats on Ballycotton who apparently didn't need rounding up but lined up in an orderly fashion along the path below the lighthouse at milking time. But these were probably a better class of goat.