Joy Battistone took a new job this year as the volunteer coordinator for the Greeley Stampede. It’s a fairly quiet job most of the time—until the two-week event itself, when she runs a crew of 400 people and tries to rope the chaos into something manageable.
She didn’t get to see her goats much at Anderson’s Patchwork Pumpkins in Ault or on her mom’s property in Briggsdale during this year’s Stampede. It was hard, and she missed them. The goats keep her grounded.
“When I have a stressful day, they calm me down,” says Battistone, 49, of Evans. “They bring back into perspective what life is about.”
Sometimes Battistone wonders how she accumulated around 100 goats, a number that seems overwhelming until you consider that she knows most of them by name. Even her fellow Stampede workers like to tease her: They call her the “crazy goat lady.”
She doesn’t mind. She knows it’s true.
A special connection
Battistone’s husband, Tom, was the animal lover when the two got married nearly 20 years ago, not her. Tom had dogs and a raccoon as pets, even a skunk. The closest thing she had to a pet was a somewhat feral barn cat on the dairy farm south of Berthoud where she grew up.
Tom suggested the goats as a way to control the weeds on the pasture where the couple’s cattle roam outside of Kersey. Battistone agreed, and they got a few goats from a yoga camp in 2021. They still have one from the camp that they named Yoga.
Tom sometimes regrets his suggestion, Battistone says with a laugh.
“It can be a little much sometimes,” she says. “I took to it more than he thought I would.”
Indeed, the first few goats were enough to make her fall in love. She loved the way they acted like both dogs and cats but with the kind of quirks that only goats could display. She loved how the babies bounced around, like they had rubber balls in their bellies.
Battistone would, occasionally, keep the babies in her home and drive around with them during the day. Yes, goats can be potty trained.
“Some almost act like livestock,” she says, “and others are so in tune with people.”
Using goats for good
Battistone’s goats that have that sixth sense shine around humans with special needs, even if they sometimes try to eat someone’s shirt or shoes. That’s why Battistone enjoys sharing her goats with children, either at the Stampede’s petting zoo or in special circumstances when kids with disabilities have a chance to pet them.
“Once there was a child who was nonverbal,” Battistone says, “and one of the goats lay her head in his lap. She knew exactly what he needed.”
Monica Dominguez has hosted Battistone a couple of times at her Crow Creek Events building in Briggsdale, where she occasionally organizes events for kids with developmental disabilities. Goats have a way with kids, she says, no pun intended. Goats are fun, easy-going and seem to share a special bond with the children.
“We’re in a world right now that’s very hard,” Dominguez says, “and goats make it better. They’re so much fun. Why would you not want to be around a goat?”
Battistone brings her goats to nursing homes as well, though her job at the Stampede takes priority. She only gets a few chances a year to share her goats with others who could benefit from their goofy, loving energy. She admits she was nervous to bring a goat inside an assisted living facility at first because she didn’t want her to have an accident.
“But she was perfect,” Battistone says. “A man who could no longer see went right up to her and was touching her face and horns so he could ‘see’ her, and she just sat there and let him. It was really cool.”
Battistone’s goats have babies, but she limits herself to the 100 or so she has now because they generally live as long as dogs. She does sell some for meat and will give others away as pets. But she can’t part with too many: She knows them too well, and she needs them after a long day.
“They get in your soul,” she says.
It’s possible that she was an animal lover all along, she says. She just had to find the right ones.
