GOOD reports on the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization that hires out goats to people who want to clear brush on their property.
[R]ather than spending tons of money and time on diesel-powered machines, filing the proper permits, and administering dangerous herbicides, the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization will loan your a team of 100 goats for all your brush-clearing needs--all at a very modest rates. As Serious Eats explains, the benefits of goats are numerous: they eat just about anything, they can work on uneven ground, you don't need permits to use them, and they can clear a quarter-acre in about three days.Rental Goats Clear Brush Better, Beat Cosmonauts in Space Race
RSS Feed
My grandpa bought goats to clear a big farm of small brush after purchasing the land in the 1940s.
It's a long-known brush-clearing solution.
There is a similar company in California that has been renting out goats to places like the Berkeley hills for the last 12 years or so called Goats R Us. They clear poison oak as well as brush which is pretty awesome.
Not sure why this is being treated as new.... I have lived in 6 different states and 3 countries, and everywhere I have lived I have seen rent-a-goats. It is a GREAT way to take care of brush, but its old hat by now.
I do like that news about this is being propagated.. now if we could just gengineer got lawnmowers haha.
What I would love to see is an article about hunters pushing invasive species into new areas so they can hunt them, such as birds and especially boar.
Brilliant! While you're at it you can hire a falconer to do rodent control. Now if only someone would offer anteater rentals...
Wonder if they could clear out Japanese Knotweed.
Goats for the brush, and sheep for the lawn. Small-scale ruminants work great even in a suburban setting.
Read through the web site. You need to understand that the service *starts* at $1025 per day...
You mean W. doesn't need to personally clear all the brush in Texas?
Now I think I'll start a service offering to remove goat-shit from previously brush-infested sites.
an old friend from high school moved back to his family's "ancestral" land in Kentucky and is now raising goats... he told me that the state of Kentucky pays him if his goats eat the particularly nasty invasive plants in his area.
Yep, we've had the goats clearing the wildfire buffer zone on our Bay Area property for decade or so now. The goatherder pulls his fifth wheel trailerhome on to the property and lives there for a week or so while the goats do their thing. The kids love it, and it brings a smile to everyone's eyes.
The Oregon Extension Service (a program based out of Oregon State University) offers goat "rentals" as well as gardening information, help with canning and preserving, and pretty much any other agriculture related help you can think of.
We saw the Goats R Us team once, I think, driving home from San Francisco: a person watching a few goats merrily chew up the brush alongside the highway. It was pretty neat to see. (And there was at least one fairly large goat with them, much taller than the small goats I'm used to from petting zoos.)
In the "after" picture, the brush does not appear to be cleared. Merely de-greened; it's still impassibly tangled with scrub, although much less attractive to look at.
Great, so instead of clearing brush I'm clearing piles of goat droppings.
Are they really clearing all the brush, or are they just eating all the green leaves, leaving the rest of the bush for a person to remove?
Man, they eat *everything.* My mom's property was covered in blackberry bushes, and they ate the thorns, the stalks, all of it. Their tongues are like leather.
also the star of Pemco Insurance's 'We're a Lot Like You" ad campaign.
http://www.werealotlikeyou.com/ (Flash site - Profile #80)
We've used an SF area company for 2 years on our temple property. The kids love to watch them. Only downside is that when they're done you'll find all the old tires, dead branches, and other refuse that had been covered up by the grass and weeds. There were more than two truckloads of that junk. There's a trailer on site and the goats are kept behind temporary fencing.
@#15: Why would you clear goat droppings? They don't really smell and they fertilize, and they're hard and dry. Goat poo isn't really very messy.
Won't the brush just grow back?
I mean I can brush cut English Ivy to the ground and it will re-sprout and continue to thrive. The same goes for most of the plants I need to get rid of. Of course manually ripping it all out seems to work pretty good. It's just hard on the hands and back.
I used to ride my bike up into the hills behind Berkeley. They use goats to clear brush up there. One day I stopped to talk to the herder, who was living in a little camper with a dog. He said he was from South America, traveled the US managing goat herds for brush clearing. Said he'd worked in Texas, Oklahoma, a few other places. I wanted to ask him more, but there was a language barrier that I couldn't cross (my Spanish is lame). Anyway, he was an extremely interesting guy and I wish I could've spoken with him more.
When I was a kid, I used to see goats around military installations - my understanding was that they were used around munitions storage (no sparks from lawnmowers).
@#7
"Read through the web site. You need to understand that the service *starts* at $1025 per day..."
that's only $10.25 per goat. Also, it might be prudent to see what conventional methods cost to get a sense of perspective. a quarter acre is 10,890 square feet - or a square ~100 feet on a side. that's a not insignificant amount of brush. plus, with conventional means, you have to have all the material hauled off, which can be expensive.
Depending on the vegetation, and the amount of time you leave them there, and how bored they get, goats will often destroy the vegetation right down to the dirt-line.
Goats are an extremely destructive natural force, to be used with care. They will nibble on absolutely anything they can get into their mouths: from the leather upholstery on your vintage MG Midget convertible to the (lit) cigarette in your hand.
The REALLY cool thing about goats is that their eyes have rectangularly-dilating pupils, which just looks amazingly satanic.
Here in Charlottesville, the service is called Goat Busters. Har, har.
@asplund
The spark issue is quite important. Major fires have been started by sparks from landscaping equipment.
@#3
"Not sure why this is being treated as new"
I'M not sure where you got the impression that this WAS being treated as new...
@#5 agies
regular knotweed is on their list:
Blackberries
Ivy
Scotch Broom
Knot Weed
Morning Glory
Holly
nuisance trees and saplings
Nettle, Thistle, grasses, and Horsetail
There is also Eco-Goats -- recently hired to clear some brush in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park.
I'm always happy to see the hordes of rented goats here in the Oakland hills at the start of fire season. I once referred to them as "fire control goats" to my wife, and she promptly re-dubbed them "pyrokinetic goats," which sounds rather less helpful.
My daughter's school has a steep, rock-strewn slope on one side that was completely overgrown with blackberries and English ivy. Parents tried on several occasions to clear it out, to no avail. So they brought in the goats, and they were stunningly effective. They took about four days, just leaving them penned in with some water. Oh and the kids loved them, and weren't exposed to toxins.
There are some photos here: http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=3767.
cattle will eat the grass down to ~ 1/4" high. and it grows back.
Goats will eat everything, as high as they can climb, as low as they can dig.
they are EXTREMELY effective for clearing land. But you will need to re-seed, or plant if yuo want anything to grow.
I've watched goats eat grass, weeds, poison ivy, sticks, tin cans, electrified fencing, fiberglass off an old boat
They are VERY effective eating and cleaning machines. When they eat your land bare, they will jump/climb/eat the fence to get to your neighbor.
On a slightly weird note, has anyone noticed the rotating herd of sheep at Zanker and Hwy 237 in Silicon Valley? they seem to be moved to different parts of the intersection, dissapear for a while, then come back. I do not know why?
I grew up in Silicon Valley and they used to bring in the goats to clear the brush on the hill by our high school. We often ate our lunches on that hill and at a certain point in the year, we'd go up and find it fenced off and covered with goats. It always amused us, despite the fact that it meant having to find a new spot to eat our sandwiches.
Plus, you can't eat a lawnmower!
Are you suggesting eating a goat? No thanks!
I was amazed to see them clear out Himalayan blackberries, the noxious invasive plant here in the Northwest.
Of course you eat goat! I like my chicken and my goat with curry. (hurry, hurry.)
Any experience with this or are you just suggesting it from your suburban horizon?
I have sheep and would not suggest them to any suburbanite. They need fences and daily care. Protection from dogs and other predators. Water, feed, shearing and hoof trimming. It takes commitment and work.
My landlord once brought in 3 goats to clear the back yard of grass. The goats preferred the 3 orange trees and the 2 lemon trees. And don't get me started on the cannister-shot goat pellets!!
Stoned goats clear Humoldt County farm....
Save gas by not using a lawnmower by renting goats that are hauled around in a 5th wheel.
Uhm....
it happens in Los Angeles too.
It is nothing weird.
Goats been known for that.
You City people!!!!
I live in LA
The City of L.A. has used goats at Angels Knolls Park a couple of times now:
http://la.curbed.com/tags/goats
goats eat the leaves which is the best way to kill the brush. If they were to eat the whole plant, then as it is when you cut back any other plant, they would send four times as much growth. When only the leaves are eaten the bush thinks it is still alive and doesn't send new growth.
the goat pellets are good for the land.
if you think 1,000 is a lot of money to clear a 1/4 acre of blackberries, you have never cleared blackberries.
who then clears the goat poo?
yer mom
Wow, they want you to pay them $1250 a day to feed their goats? WTH for that price I buy up to 25 of them and resell them after the complete the job?!?!
Goat droppings are small and don't smell (at least not as much as the goats do) and they biodegrade into fertilizer with the first hard rain.
Also, they actually love to eat poison ivy, so what's not to like?
"Nothing makes a desert like a goat."
-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
We have had the goats in the Bay Area out on Yerba Buena Island clearing the extremely steep slopes, which were covered by chest high or higher blackberry brambles and poison oak. They did a great job and it was amazing to watch them work. The goats cleared it much faster than a five man crew ever could have, and with less safety risk. They love the steeps. First they trample, then they eat! Also, border collies are involved, so yeah, awesome.
I love this. Our local waste water treatment plant has a fenced lagoon where they use a small herd of sheep (with a watch llama!) to 'mow' the lawn around the lagoon.
FYI
My prices at Rent-a-Ruminant LLC start at $725/24 hour day Who came up with the $1200 and $1025 per day?? I also bid for larger jobs and that drops the price..