Goats like to climb : A fun article and photos of climbing goats in towers dating back to the 13th century and now a tourist attraction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_tower   More photos and history of the towers

The wonderful world of Goat Towers

by Great Big Story 

Goats are famous for their climbing ability, but most members of the field-dwelling goat community can’t put those skills to use. Cue the goat tower.  These strange structures serve no real practical purpose, but they’re funny and make for great photos. 

A wise looking goat in his tower. (Getty Images)

The idea dates back to 13th century Portugal, when a winemaker decided goats didn’t belong in a field. To provide his goats with a terrain he thought they would enjoy more, he constructed the world’s first goat tower, and the small building came to define the wine estate. 

To this day, the vineyard at Quinta Da Aveleda has a goat tower, and they are proud of their unique little role in history, as well as the way they inspired the others. While only a handful of goat towers have popped up around the world, Francisco Guedes Almeida, heir of the Aveleda winemakers, once encountered one by chance in South Africa, unaware of the direct link to his family home.

A goat tower at Fairview Wines Estate in Paarl, South Africa.

“I was doing my master’s degree in wine and traveling the world when I went to this place in South Africa,” Almeida told UOL. “I immediately called my uncle saying: ‘I’m in a place that feels like home. It has a goat tower like I’ve never seen. I’ve only seen it in Aveleda.’ And my uncle said, ‘You’re in Fairview.’ This producer made goat cheese and when he visited Aveleda in the 1960s he asked for permission to build one on his property. We still have his letter today.”

The tower Almeida encountered was at Fairview Cheese & Wine Farm in Paarl, South Africa. As well as this one and the tower in Quinta da Aveleda, there are two famous goat towers in the United States – the Tower of Baaa in Illinois and the tower at Silky O’Sullivan’s Bar in Memphis. There are also goat towers at Ekeby Farm in Moss, Norway, and the Torre de Cabras at Finca el Rocio near Córdoba, Argentina.

There is also a digital goat tower, found in GoatVille on the Goat Simulator video game. While it might sound like a niche market for a video game, Goat Simulator (similar to goat towers) took the internet by storm and the game sold by the millions. 

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I wrote about goats in trees in Morocco before  Enjoy