Tired of clearing Overgrowth, Blackberries and Scotch Broom?
Here’s the solution – Hire these Baaad Girls to do the work for you!
It makes sense to choose an environmentally healthy approach to brush clearing and weed control. Goats are the “green” choice, but, best of all, goats, with their cute personalities and entertaining habits are just plain fun to have around. Whether you want to watch them from your window, or go outside and join them, they’ll get the work done and win your heart too!
● It takes 60 goats about 3-5 days to clear one quarter acre (10,000 sq. ft.) down to the woody canes and vines which can be cut and removed.
● A goat can eat up to 8 pounds of green foliage a day. Removing a plant’s leaves eventually starves the roots.
● Goats are ‘browsers’, whose diet consists of about 70 percent non-grassy species. They would rather eat brush and weeds than grass.
● They are known as ‘top down grazers’, meaning they eat what is above before eating lower-growing plants. They eat leaves and branches to a height of three to four feet, creating a uniform effect as they go. Goats also will eat along a fence line before turning inward toward the center of an area. This produces orderly clearing in brush that has grown into a thicket.
● Goats happily eat some of our most problematic weeds including blackberry, morning glory/ bindweed, English ivy, knotweed, thistle and Scotch broom. They can take a woody plant like a Himalayan blackberry and use their mobile upper lip to select the tender, highly digestible new leaves to eat, and leave behind the less digestible branches and thorns. Because of this ability to select and reject different parts of the plant, goats are called selective eaters.
Before We Work
We’ll come out to see your site and give you a bid based on the length of time needed for the goats to be there and how much human assistance is required for a thorough job of brush clearing.
On the Job
● Areas to be “treated” are fully fenced with portable electrified netting.
● By day, someone manages the ‘buffet’. We manually eliminate any noxious (to the goats) plants and keep the goats focused. As they eat the unwanted vegetation within their reach, we clip and pull vines from the trees to insure that the goats always have plenty to eat. Then the fences are moved so that more weeds and brambles are within reach and available to be eaten.
● By night, a goat herder stays on site, and tends the goats, making sure they are contained near their trailer, safe from predators, and have shelter in case it rains.