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Goat Rental – Hire Goats

hiregoats.com

261–270 of 280 posts

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

our state DOT has rented goats to clean the sides of roads along highways in some rural areas, especially when there are large amount of noxious weeds. The person they hire strings up a bunch of short fiberglass poles for a mile or two along the highway with some wires, puts out some water, and then lets the goats in. Comes back and picks them up a couple of days later, and moves them to the other side.

Goats LOVE poison ivy and oak, and it doesn't hurt them. Don't let them near hemlock though (it will do the same to them as it did Socrates)

They seem to like Scotch broom as well. Some red-leafed garden ornamental is brutally toxic to them though, and it can be a slow, agonizing death.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#262

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.

What I see is months of not needing to operate a mower.

You need sheep for that. Goats don't much like grass. I have to mow our paddock, except for when I borrowed a friend's sheep for a few days.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#263
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bee milk is extremely spicy, but each bee can only be milked once and doesn't produce very much.

You can harvest venom and it’s worth quite a lot. It does seem a bit like bee torture though.

Huh, TIL.

> It does seem a bit like bee torture though.

Agreed. Though I'm not sure how simple a brain has to be before I can stop caring, I prefer to opt on the side of caution.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#264

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

Yes, a couple of the trees needed replacing.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#265
post #63

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.

In German, there’s an old phrase: “Appointing the goat as gardener”. You use it when somebody is being made responsible for task for which he is not just incompetent, but where he will actually cause damage - for instance because he has ulterior motives.

> ulterior motives. LOLLLLLL.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. I have literally nothing against eating rabbits - they are delicious in fact. I do hover, object to lying. Like OP said - they(everyone in fact) have the right to make an informed choice. By omitting this information, people who are returning a rabbit aren't making an informed choice. It's a trick, a ruse, if money was involved I'd call it a fraud. Nothing to do with squeamishness.

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

what matters is not what we think. What matters is what the girl recovering the rabbits thinks. If she thinks that if she told the truth the rabbits wouldn't be returned to her, then by not saying anything, she is lying by omission.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#267
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In German, there’s an old phrase: “Appointing the goat as gardener”. You use it when somebody is being made responsible for task for which he is not just incompetent, but where he will actually cause damage - for instance because he has ulterior motives.

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

In Czech, "udělat kozla zahradníkem".

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation implies that the person selling the rabbits as pets would attempt to rehome them or care for them as pets. There's a difference between being technically correct, and being moral. While the language used is technically correct for the situation, omitting the information about where the rabbits end up is immoral. Clearly OP understands that if the whole truth was told, they wouldn't be getting a free sou…

Is it dishonest to buy a rabbit and not mention that you're planning to eat/breed/keep it as a pet? No of course not, it's none of the seller's business. If they say "hey we're vegan please don't eat our rabbits" that's a different matter, it would be at the very least polite to respect those wishes. Why on Earth would returning a rabbit to a farm where they eat them be any different? In this case the possibility is…

"it's none of the seller's business"

In this case, the parties are close relatives, so I would argue that their threshold of duty to disclose such facts is somewhat higher than in case of complete strangers.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#269
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In German, there’s an old phrase: “Appointing the goat as gardener”. You use it when somebody is being made responsible for task for which he is not just incompetent, but where he will actually cause damage - for instance because he has ulterior motives.

Is the emphasis of what will cause the damage more about the incompetence, or about more purposeful nefarity from the eg. ulterior motives?

I’m not sure. I’d say it’s mostly on hire unwise the choice is, and how predictable the results. Kinda like the fable The Scorpion and the Frog.

Re: Goat Rental – Hire Goats

#270

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?

I was in Northern Vietnam in 2019, happily riding my rental scooter around.

I ride right past a dog on a rotisserie.

I stopped to talk to the guy and he showed me his sign that said Dog Meat. After learning the words for dog meat in Vietnamese, I saw the signs everywhere.

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