The continued use of a goat in Killorglin’s annual puck fair is a “very overt and a very public display of animal cruelty”, an animal rights activist has argued. 

The annual fair brings thousands of visitors to the Kerry town each summer. 

However, the crowning of a wild goat as ‘King Puck’ has been repeatedly criticised; a wild goat is captured and then enthroned in a cage as King Puck, which allows people at the fair to marvel at him. 

For locals, it is an important tradition that dates back hundreds of years, but animal rights activists believe it is time the town came up with a new one. 

On Newstalk Breakfast, Gerry Boland of Animals Behind Closed Doors noted that in recent years the fair was “forced” to cut the amount of time King Puck spends on his throne because of the heat, which he describes as a “complete drama”. 

“There was a complete uproar,” he recalled. 

“The committee were forced to take the goat down because of the heatwave and they decided at that point in time that the publicity was so negative that they would only put the goat up, I think it's an hour a day.”

Mr Boland argued that a “braver decision” would be to “get rid of the goat completely”. 

“I still maintain that it's a very overt and a very public display of animal cruelty,” he said. 

“And, you know, I'm glad you invited me on about this, but I'd much prefer, to be honest with you, to be talking about the four million pigs that are in sheds. 

“[They] never see the light of day and never see the sun or the rain on their backs and have their teeth clipped at birth and have the tail stopped at birth simply because they'd mutilate each other.

“This is the real cruelty that goes on in Ireland.”

King Puck. Picture by: RollingNews.ie

Mr Boland continued that a wild goat has no idea it is being granted an honour and likely spends its reign as King Puck terrified. 

“If we put you in the cage, at least we'd be able to rationalise with you and tell you that you're only going to be there for an hour and you mightn't like it, but you could rationalise and say, ‘Okay, it'll be over in an hour’,” he argued. 

“But the goat hasn't any idea what's going on; it's taken from a mountain and it's brought into town, a busy town, an extremely busy town during a festival, and it's put in the cage 50 feet above the town.

“Clearly that is distressing; we don't we can't ask the goat if it likes it, but of course it doesn't like it.”

Main image: King Puck in his cage. Picture by: RollingNews.ie.