Judas goats? Did nicotine-addicted goats once lead 1,000 lambs per day up giant ramps to the killing floor of slaughterhouses in exchange for a plug of tobacco or a single cigarette?
“It’s all true no matter how bizarre it seems today,” says Pat Padgett, a 40-year veteran of the meatpacking industry and firsthand witness to the unforgettable Judas goat spectacle.
“Judas goats were about ingenuity, betrayal, instinct, symbolism, and so much more, but the public today, even people in agriculture or farming, have never heard about them,” he adds. “I’m one of the last people to have seen them in action and the Judas goat story still fascinates me.”
Killing Pits
In 1947, Padgett was born in southeastern Illinois’ Clay City, in the shadow of a father at the helm of two funeral homes, and a grandfather behind the reins of a country doctor’s horse-and-buggy. However, when young Padgett began tending livestock on a county farm during high school, he found a career call away from the mortuary or medical field—animal science.
After earning a bachelor’s and master’s at Southern Illinois University, Padgett obtained a state job, learning the ropes of meat inspection at the Du Quoin Packing Co. in Perry County. “I thrived in the job with cows and pigs, but as much as I learned about packing and meat, I still never heard a thing about Judas goats. In fact, I’d never heard the terms ‘Judas’ and ‘goats’ in combination in my life to that point.”
Excelling in performance and reputation, Padgett was leased to USDA as a combination grader/inspector and shipped around the country, including a stint starting in 1971 at the Wilson Packing Plant in Omaha, Neb.—the realm of Judas goats.
Talking shop with Wilson’s butchers on the killing floor, Padgett heard details of the double-cross parade to come. “I was a grader, and in my day, unfortunately, many graders carried a superior attitude to the workers inside a meatpacking plant. Not me. I believed you could learn something new from every single person inside a plant, and I’d go spend time in the killing pits, trying to educate myself in anyway possible. And that’s when the butchers told me about Judas goats. I’d never imagined or seen anything like it.”
Treachery
The meatpacking facilities of old were multi-level structures, often four, five, or six stories in height, with each floor assigned a specific facet of animal processing. The killing floor usually occupied the top level and served as a conduit to further processing on the floors below via a network of chutes, pipes, and drains. Livestock were delivered up to the killing floor via walled, ramps that buttressed the plants in a staggered, zigzag pattern, or by straight-shot ramps that rose to the uppermost levels.
Cattle and pigs could be pushed or herded up the ramps and onto a given floor, but sheep were an entirely unique challenge.
“Wilson Plant in Omaha had five Judas goats, all with bells around their necks,” Padgett describes. “I’d say three were full-time and usually two were in training, because you always had to have steady backups in case something went wrong. We were moving about 1,100 to 1,300 lambs per day through the plant and that meant the Judas goats had to deliver every single sheep up to the killing floor. They were easy to train and did their job perfect every time.”
“Let me be clear: Without the Judas goats, there were not enough men in south Omaha to move 1,000-plus sheep up a ramp because the sheep would bunch up or balk. In other words, the plant was truly dependent on the Judas goats to betray the sheep.”
The Death Climb
Sheep usually arrived at Wilson Packing via railcars—weighed, registered, and placed in one of 10 main holding pens. A Judas goat was released into a given pen to mingle and acclimate the sheep.
The Judas goats were charged with a single duplicitous task: Lead the sheep from the ground level pens up the ramps to the fourth floor and into the kill pits, despite the overwhelming smell of blood and death. Upon delivery, the goats were rewarded with a tobacco prize.
The procedure, according to Padgett: “It started early each morning. The Judas goats knew exactly what they were doing. The gate on one of the main pens was opened and the Judas goat went out first, his bell ringing. The sheep trusted and followed right behind. They funneled to the ramps and started going up. The ramps had cleats for grips so the livestock wouldn’t slip. Sometimes it might be 100 or more sheep at one time, sometimes less. If the sheep paused, the goat would turn around and bleat, assuring the flock that everything was fine and to keep going. The Judas goat knew he had to get those sheep to the top to get his tobacco.”
“At Wilson’s, the kill pits were on the fourth floor. The Judas goat came off the ramp and marched into a large indoor pen, with all the sheep coming behind. The pen had a side-gate where the goat was let out, and that’s when the kill pit guys would break off a piece of plug tobacco and feed the Judas goat. Then the men would start slaughtering and the goat would go right back down the ramp to get another load so he could get more tobacco. No question, the goats were serious nicotine addicts.”
Solid Mass
Padgett also spent part of his career at the immense Armour and Co. meatpacking plant in St. Paul, Minn., and observed the same Judas goat system. “I remember that plant being about six stories and the sheep were killed high up, but I can’t be certain what floor. But just like in Omaha, they were using Judas goats at Armour into the 1970s.”
How far back in history were Judas goats used to control sheep? Likely for centuries; certainly back to the 1800s. The Nov. 30, 1912 edition of the Pacific Rural Press describes the Judas goat system and cites details which closely align with Padgett’s recollection at Wilson in Omaha and Greg Dunn’s account at Swift in Sioux City:
At all the large stockyards of the country the packing firms have bell goats for leading sheep from the sales pens to the chutes at their slaughtering houses … when sheep are purchased they are led instead of being driven, and the leader of the sheep is not a man, but a trained goat. Each firm has a trained goat of its own, and frequently several of them. From the sheep sales pens to the chutes the way is devious, often through many gates, across streets and tracks, under sheds and elevated structures and full of so many crooks and turns that only a wise man or a trained goat could ever find the way. So when a bunch of sheep has been purchased the bell goat is placed at their head and he leads the procession. An attendant follows to open and close gates. The sheep follow the goat in one solid mass without deviation. When the slaughtering pen is reached a gate is opened and the goat goes in with all the sheep following. At one side a small gate is opened for the goat to go out, but the sheep which have been led to the shambles and their last pen are closed in. The bell goat takes his own course over the city streets, or wherever he will, on his way back to the stockyard’s sheep house.
Royalty
Padgett was one of the last observers of Judas goat utilization at an industrial level in the United States. “By the late 1970s, the multilevel meatpacking plants were gone and Judas goats weren’t needed to move thousands of sheep,” he says. “I saw that window close in agriculture history.”
Judas goats, Padgett emphasizes, were the princes of packing plants and placed on a pedestal. “They were royalty. Nobody mistreated the Judas goats and they were very well looked after. In a sense, they ran part of the meatpacking plant. If there were no goats, there was no sheep processing and no income from that part of the business.”
“Meatpacking became a part of my life,” Padgett adds, “and I lived out my hobby of animal science through my occupation for 40 years. Judas goats were once a completely normal part of agriculture, but it’s a fascinating history that got lost. It’s kind a lesson for our modern time: Don’t blindly go the way popular culture moves, or where the in-crowd goes, or what the mainstream tells you to think. Look out for the Judas goats.”
(For more on Judas goats, see: Agriculture’s Bizarre, Drug-Addicted Masters of Deceit Once Ruled the Killing Floor)
For more from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
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Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
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Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
