Royal Welsh tackle Great Orme to find regimental goat

Jun 18 2009 by David Powell, North Wales Weekly News

Goat chasing troops get into a right nanny state

TROOPS were getting to know their newest recruit this week – Billy the regimental goat.

Thirty soldiers from 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh had set off from Dale Barracks in Chester at 3am on Monday on a mission to find a suitable candidate from Llandudno’s Great Orme, with the park chiefs’ approval. They had hoped they’d be groggier and more catchable then but were surprised when they found they were sprightly.

Lance Corporal Ryan Arthur said: “We got up at 3am to get here for 4.30am. We rounded up the nannies because they had the kids with them. There were about 90 nannies so we had quite a choice of kids.

“We chose the early hours because the goats are just waking up and can’t bolt that fast. But we were proven wrong!

“We failed on two attempts to round up nanny goats, but it was all good fun.”

The Army was keen for the kid to be the right age.

L/Cpl Arthur said: “If it was over a year old it’d be harder to train. This one is about five months old, which is ideal.”

He hopes its horns will grow in the magnificently circular way befitting its predecessors, rather than outwards.

Another rounder-upper was Lance Corporal Anthony Gossling of Wrexham.

He said: “The Great Orme is massive! Twenty-eight of us spread out and surrounded the goats and chased them into pens. It was good fun.”

The new Kashmir goat is called Billy by tradition. His predecessor is now in Whipsnade Zoo.

Captain Nick Zoreb said: “Billy’s new regimental number is 25142301.”

The 2514 is his regiment’s number, the 23 comes from when the regiment used to be the 23rd Regiment of Foot of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and the 01 denotes the 1st Battalion.

He’ll now be trained to cope with noise from the Corps of Drums and vehicles, and lead parades and visit schools

The goats originally came from Queen Victoria’s Windsor Great Park herd, presented to her by the Shah of Persia.