Multiflower Roses taking over!

They already have 10 acres field fenced, so no tethering(not a healthy thing for a goat anyway), and no watching. They will eat multiflora rose like a house afire. Just look at mine..... Goats don't need fed when not in use either...because they are continually in use, eating brush. Goats that aren't pregnant and/or milking, will be fine on just brush with some minerals available. If you don't want to feed them over the winter, buy in the spring, let them eat all spring/summer/fall, then sell them before winter sets in. Of course you must stock heavily enough that they eat the brush down, rather than just keeping full tummies and never making inroads.
Yep, they don't make good brushogs if you don't have fence to keep them in.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

If multi-floral rose gets started on your place

I would suggest moving to some distant land.

Same thing with that ubiquitous ground cover mint or do goats like it also?

Our goats eat mint. Also pokeweed, jewel weed, and of course all of the good thorny stuff.

We don't have any problems keeping ours in the fence. They have 15 acres, fenced with 7 strand high tensile (4 hot wires) and also have an interior section of that (1 acre) as a night pasture fenced with welded wire.

The big thing is to give them no reason to want to leave. We run 8 goats and a cow on 15 acres and that lets them keep it well trimmed but not overbrowsed. They have tasty browse, shade, access to fresh water, hilly land to keep them mentally active, and can come up to within a few feet of the house for added security and human company. As long as they have their own little world with everything they want in it there's no desire to go risk a nose zap on the fence. It would be a very different story if we overstocked our land and they couldn't meet their needs inside the fenced acreage.

Lynda

Or stock moderately and allow a couple of years. They will go after the tasty, thorny stuff first - but it does take a little while before they outpace the plant growth. In the early spring and summer the plants will likely grow faster than they are being eaten - for a while.

Ours continue to browse the dormant brambles and rose all winter and that's when they really do the most damage to the plants. Each spring there's less of the thorny stuff and for us, in a couple of years it got to the point that there's just a tiny frond emerging here and there from rootstock and the goats nibble them as soon as they emerge.

Lynda

Yes, it depends on your goals. I don't *want* my goats to eat all the brush......its good for them and I breed them, I don't have them for keeping brush down. So I stock lightly enough that brush comes back some every year. Bring your multiflora roses, pokeweed, scrub oak, poison ivy, brambles, etc to me!!!

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

Ours are now dining on a new treat - oak & sycamore branches that have been chipped in the wood chipper. (We've had a couple of large trees taken out lately.)

They act like they've just found an incredible new all-you-can-eat salad bar. And when they get tired of eating, they loll around in the wood chips and continue to eat! We've even sent a carryout bag of wood chips home with friends who own goats.

They make a really great addition to a mixed herd and fill a pretty special clean-up and landscaping niche. Ours have certainly paid us back for our time invested in fencing the perimeter. Now we just go out and watch them do all of the work. (Well, except for the wood chipping - we do that for them. )

Lynda

I had a very bad growth of blackberrys, poison ivy, roses, honeysuckle and sweetgum saplings. There is an abandoned house in there that I culdn't get to. I'd tried cutting a path with a bush hog, but no go.

I put 7 Dexter cattle and 2 goats in there. They took very little time eating it down. The Dexters ate all but the blackberrys and the goats took care of that. After a year, I never saw a blackberry, rose or sweetgum sapling. Honeysuckle still comes up from the roots, but doesn't get any size.

My goats increased to 10 and are due to double again. I'll have goats to take to market soon.

I think that the clearing project worked extremely well. I actually credit the Dexters with clearing more than the goats. The whole area looks like a park and is clean as high as a goat or cow can reach.

Genebo
Paradise Farm