Goats advocated as environmentally sound brush control

[ladycat]

Got brush? Want to use less herbicides to control it? Need to preserve native species of legumes and native grasses?

Consider bringing in the goats, said Dr. Jim Muir, a forage ecologist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

http://www.ntxe-news.com/artman/publ...le_36090.shtml

[fishhead]

That's why I'm trying goats on my fish farm this season. It looks like a winner.

I'm also using African geese to remove emergent vegetation that has started in my ponds. That looks like a winner too.

[Muskrat]

Mine are already hard at work. I suppose the Green Party should choose the Goat as its party symbol.

[boren]

We use our goats and sheep to mow our grass this year. Most years we use about 3-4 gallons of gas/week mowing, which is insane, but that's the amount of grass this place has. This year we picked up Premier 1's portable electric fence and rotate them through the grass as 6 different section. We never had a city slickers grass, it's pretty well suited to pasture with variety, some legumes and all that.

It's reduced our summer feed costs to no hay, and saves $10 of gas a week. It has increased our worming requirements though, so that's a little a bit expensive. Overall though what more could we ask for?

(we talk about it on our website, just visit www.geekfarmlife.com)

[fishhead]

I'm getting some before and after photos of some of my pond dikes.

[Idahoe]

When we got our goats we fenced off a section of timber and brush between two "roads" going down to the back of the property. It was full of baby timber, wild rose bush, and vine maple. It was thick enough the opposite road was invisible. Within a few days, ten dairy goats munched 100 x 75 pen down to the dirt, and a month later, all that stands are maturish trees. I can even see the mountains now, who knew if I stood in the right place I'd have a view .

Between geese and goats, I haven't mowed but once earlier this spring when all ground cover goes ga ga. Mostly it's the geese for the grasses, and goats for the brush and infant firs/cedars. The Forest Service uses some kind of goat for brush control/fire prevention in the nat'l forest between here and Montana.

[Wingdo]

I was talking with an old "cow" boy here not long ago and he ws telling me how during the dry season his bovine were taking it down to the dirt in places, and leaving the weeds! Well now old timer, what if I showed you a critter that would rather walk to the other side of the pasture to eat a stick, than to munch it's way through his best Bluegrass?

Over the past five years, we've sown upwards of two hundred pounds of pasture on this place, which many of the natives said would never grow grass nor "hold" the land in place. They believe us now! We went from a hole in a 12 acre thicket, to almost six acres of lush mixed, and very thick, pasture with nice mature trees... and there's still enough thicket to rotate another twenty head of goats!

We've had complete strangers stop by just to tell us how amazed they are with what we have done with the place, and about all I can tell them is I wish we'd of known about the skills of the goats back when I was a kid and helping clear/log the old farm! There's twenty or thirty scars that I'm wearing which would have never came to be on this old body had we had the help of these four legged weed eaters to clear for pasture/corn!

I'll never be without them again... and they do a very nice job "mowing" the yard as well! With the Arabs and oil companies sucking every nickle they can get out of me, it tickles me to rob them for a change! They can take their $130,000,000 retirement package and stick it in their ear!