Goats fighting America's plant invasion
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Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#2I love this hack. My mom had a small herd of pygmie goats for her Montessori preschool. Some guy she knew convinced her to rent them out for this kind of job.
It wasn't the money that convinced her (don't think those little guys were the best earners) but the idea that "we could send in dudes with poison sprayers and loud gas power mowers, or we could just send Billy and his friends in to quietly munch on it for a few hours/days".
So many more eco points for doing it with the goats. Plus goats are intelligent and an interesting population to have suddenly show up and take over a spot. If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was good for the kids. While being chauffeured to various feasts kept the goats in high spirits.
Even the obvious down side isn't that bad -- goat shit comes out in these clean little dry pellets; much better than dog shit or cow shit or bird shit or a San Francisco sidewalk.
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#3Another advantage which isn't mentioned: the goats (or similar grazing species) are also walking manure factories (really, compared to a compost heap they are machines), so pretty effective at spreading fertilizer all over the place. Automatically and for free :P
They perfectly fit in the self-sufficiency style - especially compared to the alternative worst-case senario: you don't need to get your polluting vehicle and drive to a store to pay money for some chemicals, then drive back and use some other polluting machine to get the checmical crap where it has to do whatever it does. Oh yeah, and repeat every year and be left with unhealthy soil. Which can probably be countered with more chemicals, yay!
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#4Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#5It takes 8 years for goat news to cross the Atlantic. ;) The NYT had an article titled "In Tennessee, Goats Eat the ‘Vine That Ate the South’" in 2007, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/us/05goats.html?_r=0 .
Tallahassee started using sheep in 1999 for kudzu. Unfortunately, people stole 10 of the sheep in 2001 (http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/072701/met_6795173... ) and another 21 in 2003 (http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20031004/NEWS/310040550 ).
I can't find mention of Tallahassee still using animals for kudzu control.
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#6When my coworkers see news like this they start telling me that I ought to bring my fleet of Nubian goats out on jobs like this. They do great work, easily digesting poison ivy (and destroying its seeds so it can't regrow from their droppings).
Goats are a big component of a project I'm working on now, where they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process.
In a small farming operation where the negatives to using many chemicals (to fertilize crops, and to kill weeds) isn't even always safety or environmental, but simply cost-related: the work that grazing animals like goats can provide is a game-changer. Plus, they are super fun animals to be around. I used to think that having a few backyard chickens for eggs would always be a no-brainer decision, but now I am sure that I'll always keep a couple goats around too.
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#7I love this hack. My mom had a small herd of pygmie goats for her Montessori preschool. Some guy she knew convinced her to rent them out for this kind of job. It wasn't the money that convinced her (don't think those little guys were the best earners) but the idea that "we could send in dudes with poison sprayers and loud gas power mowers, or we could just send Billy and his friends in to quietly munch on it for a fe…
> If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was good for the kids.
I read this sentence three times before finally deciding that you were using "kid" to refer to human children and not young goats. It's true either way.
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#8When Amazon Japan used goats as lawnmowers [1], proper procedure had to be maintained:
"The company has officially hired the goats following a procedure similar to the one used when hiring humans: it made identity cards for goats, just as it did for its human employees."
[1] http://www.tokyotimes.com/amazon-japan-hires-goats-to-mow-gr...
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#9Aren't these goats also an invasive species?
Re: Goats fighting America's plant invasion
#10When my coworkers see news like this they start telling me that I ought to bring my fleet of Nubian goats out on jobs like this. They do great work, easily digesting poison ivy (and destroying its seeds so it can't regrow from their droppings). Goats are a big component of a project I'm working on now, where they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with thei…
they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process
Almost literally as it's described by John Seymour! Ok he talks about pigs, but there's not that much difference - quote: To say nothing of the fact that pigs are the finest free cultivators that were ever invented! They will clear your land, and plough it, and dung it, and harrow it, and leave it nearly ready for you to put your seed in, with no more labour to you than the occasional shifting of an electric fence