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Goat Rental – Hire Goats

hiregoats.com

221–230 of 280 posts

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#221

Tried hiring a local goat rental to tame my parents' yard, the guy on the phone complained about "this thing called a living wage" that he has to pay his workers. He won't take jobs less than 10 acres or his business runs at a loss. Many cities need regular plant clearing, though, so by reliably selling services to local city and county governments, his business will never fail.

> reliably selling services to local city and county governments

And cities are starting to do this more regularly too. E.g. NYC's Riverside park was cleared with goats this year. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goats-released-new-york-cit...)

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#222
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of people adopt a pet, and then release it into the wild? People doing this with cats is one of the reasons stray cats are such a big problem in many places. People dumping cat litters in the woods and what not. And rabbits can be an ecological menace too if allowed to multiply, which they do like rabbits .

Fish and turtles immediately come to mind. I knew of somebody who released Siberian dwarf hamsters and for a brief period they multiplied in their backyard before the local red tailed hawk caught wind

This!

where i live there are wild rabbits and in previous years the population has literally exploded.

The Rabbits are smart, they build a den under my deck knowing the dog cant reach them and the dog keeps other predators away.

Then a red tailed fox moved into the area... and now instead of finding whole rabbits roaming the neighbourhood, you find the odd rabbit component. Maybe a rear quarter here, or a front limb there.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#223

Story time - My dad asked the local school which had a goat if he can borrow it for a weekend. It was to tame his backyard. As the backyard was enclosed with no chance of the goat escaping, we left it by itself. The goat was be extremely hungry and ate everything insight including the roots, leaves and bark. By Monday, the backyard is barren and took months recover. Moral of the story - keep an eye on the goat.

Note that if tree bark is eaten all around the tree circumference, the tree dies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girdling

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#224
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps one of the finest shows since streaming became a thing

It really is - because not only is it hilarious, it also highlights just how difficult modern farming has become - razor thin margins, at the whims of the weather, dealing with vandlism from local youths with nothing better to do etc. etc.

When was farming not on razor thin margins at the whims of the weather? At least US history is full of sharecropping where the farmers barely making ends meet and those with enough capital to own their own small farms not doing much better. Some of those who owned a lot of land with sharecroppers managed to do ok though. It's similar today, except sharecropping has gone out of style, I think. Big farms and little farms are on very thin margins, but thin margins on a small farm mean Clarkson made like a hundred pounds or something after a year (probably ignoring his capital costs).

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#225
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, goats deal really well with sloped areas that machines and people struggle with. Where I live they get used a lot on highway embankments.

Electric mowers and brush cutters solved that years ago. They weigh nothing.

So...

You prefer two stroke gasoline engines (Very environmentally unfriendly) vs goats because???

I've never seen city employees using "electric mowers"??? Probably because the battery life is simply useless for anything beyond a small yard?

On top of this, you prefer to pay unionized city worker wages to remove weeds instead of an environmentally friendly goat do it for almost nothing?

I saw 2 city workers trying to clear an area the other day. 3 hours later they were still there, gasoline burning trimmers screaming away. I'd say they had at lest a day of work left. Two workers, there all day - probably a few tanks of gas as well...

Personally, i'd prefer they had Goats as an option.. but that is just me.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#226

When goats eat weeds will they eat and destroy the whole weed? Or do they eat just down to the surface level of the ground which will let the weed grow back immediately?

Depends on the goat and the weed. My goats only like the flowers of dandelion analogues, but for some other weeds, one will try to get the whole thing out and the others just eat the leaves to the ground.

If you put them in a small space, you'll pretty much get bare earth either way though.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, in fact, safely return the rabbit to the stew pot. They're food. Rabbits. People eat them. It's not better for the rabbit to be turned loose to be mauled to death by a housecat or eaten by a coyote. A shelter is going to euthanize, wasting good meat. This is squeamishness masquerading as morality.

Are dogs food?

Are pigs food to Muslims?

Is there a culture where eating rabbit is taboo?

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#229
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share the German language phrase? I tried to Google for it, but I cannot find anything.

Den Bock zum Gärtner machen

"Pukki kaalimaan vartijana" for the Finnish equivalent (goat guarding the cabbage patch)

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're returning the rabbits to the previous owners. There's no further expectation of duty to either party.

I think the expectation is that since they bought the rabbit there and the rabbit was happily living there, when they return it, they expect it to still live. They think they are returning the rabbit to its "natural" environment and will happily live on the farm. So there is no legal duty or obligation, but morally, the expectation on both parties are definitely not the same. Otherwise they would tell them that they…

Yeah but it's a farm... it's not a rabbit rescue and pet store
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