Reduce fire risk, remove invasive species, and restore native species at the same time
With the help of herders, dogs, and portable fencing, the advantages of employing goats are numerous:
- Goats are cost-effective and environmentally sound.
- Goats reduce fossil fuel consumption.
- Goats eliminate the use of toxic chemicals and they are more successful.
- Goats don’t just eat the weeds–they actually kill them. The first thing goats do when they walk through the pasture is snap off all the flower heads. Then they pick the leaves off one at a time, very quickly, leaving a bare stock.
- Once the goats graze the weed, it cannot go to seed because it has no flower and it cannot photosynthesize to build a root system because it has no leaves.
- Goats reduce soil disturbance and take good care of the soil. They poop in it and while they’re eating they stomp it down and recycle it to fertilizer.
- Goat grazing makes good cattle pasture, cattle grazing makes good goat pasture. Cattle like grasses, goats do not. Grasses are a goat’s least favorite food choice.
- To a cattle producer, there is no production on land that is covered with noxious weeds.
- Goats eat noxious weeds including knapweeds, thistles, poison oak, mustard species, leafy spurge, tamarisk, hemlock, white top, cactus, salt cedar, juniper, pampas grass, and more.
- Goats create very limited impact and do not compact the soil. They are well suited for steep weedy areas, degraded or disturbed sites, construction sites, roadways, and sensitive areas including wetlands and streams.
- Goats are used to reclaim soil health and shift damaged sites from noxious weeds to deep-rooted perennial grasses and native vegetation.
- Goats are the best fire prevention tools available. Goats slow down or prevent fires by eating enough brush to create firebreaks to prevent fires from jumping from wildlands to structures in wildfire-prone areas before fire season strikes.