Karen Stewart, supervisor for the goat barn at your Utah State Fair, looked out at the half-dozen 4-H Club youngsters parading their young goats in front of the judges and said: "Literally, this is an all-kid show."

Goat humor. You gotta love it.

As long as there's been a state fair, there's been a goat competition, where various breeds of the sheep family's less-known cousins enthusiastically vie for blue ribbons, grand champion and best-of-show awards.

Well, at least their owners do. The goats act as if they couldn't care less.

I watched Benjamin Smith's goat, Stars & Garters, for instance, win no less than the grand champion ribbon in the junior no-milk doe LaMancha category (if you're a goat keeper, you'll appreciate what that means), and all Stars & Garters wanted to do was get back to the pen and eat grass.

"Oh, they don't really care," said Smith, a senior at Syracuse High School and a "goat guy" since he was 8. "It's way more important to them that you don't ignore them. They're very social, you know."

I didn't know, but between Benjamin, Karen and Benjamin's mom, Nita, I soon received a crash course in all things goat.

I learned that there are two basic reasons anybody owns goats: One is for their milk and their meat, and the other is because they make great companions to horses.

Goat milk is a lot easier on the system than cow's milk. A lot of people consider it to be the cleanest and healthiest milk you can find. It is naturally homogenized, and anyone who is lactose intolerant can drink goat milk all day long without a problem.

Goat meat is similarly extolled for its health benefits — a low-fat, easily digested alternative to red meat.

As for horses, they love to have a goat in the pasture, and not as a food source.

"Horses do not like to be alone," explained Karen. "They like to be social, and so do goats. Put them together and they're both happy."

Horses can get so attached to goats that they go into a funk when they're separated.

Benjamin explained that the old expression "got your goat" comes from the dependent horse-goat relationship.

"When somebody says they 'got your goat,' it means they kidnapped the goat and your horse won't run," he said.

Nita added that goats are exceptionally intelligent animals. Maybe not quite as smart as dolphins, but close.

"They say goats average about 80 IQ," she said. "That's smarter than some humans — and a lot smarter than cows."

One mark of their intelligence, said Benjamin, is their ability to open gates and break out of places.

"They can do anything that doesn't require a thumb," he said.