Cleaning Pastures                                                        

Goats love to clean a pasture and boy are they good at it.  We have 40 acres of woods and buck brush galore, and we really thought it would take them forever to clean it up; needless to say we were wrong.  They do a really good job and buck brush is one their favorite as well as cedar trees.  All farmers should take note that they love weeds, any kind of weeds. Examples of weeds goats like are Canada thistle, cheat grass, common candy, common mullein, dalmatian toad flax, dandelions, downy brome, Indian tobacco, knapweeds, lap spur, leafy spurge, loco weed, musk thistle, oxide daisy, plume less thistle, poison hemlock, purple loostrife, scotch thistle, knapweed, sweet clover, yellow star thistle, yucca and I am sure there are one I have not mentioned.  They are the type of animal that can be run with cattle, but will not eat what the cattle eat.

I wanted to mention a little bit more about leafy spurge since it grows so abundantly, and is so hard to kill.  It is a deep-rooted perennial and has a very extensive root system.  They shoot their seeds eight feet in all directions, and the root system is also spreading at the same time.  The root system can go down as far as 30 feet, and can grow in a crack of a rock, or even 20 feet off the ground.  How do you eradicate something 20 feet off the ground in a tree?  Goats, and leafy spurge is one of their favorite food and they do climb trees. 

For numerous noxious weeds, chemical sprays are ineffective. One example is oxide daisy, which has no leaf surface for the chemical to be absorbed but goats love it.  They are one of the best weed eaters there is.  There are several people who have herds of goats and go from pasture to pasture and do nothing but have these weed eaters clean.  Goats are a wonderful alternative to chemical sprays, and they fertilize the pasture as they eat - what more could you ask?

We started out with tons of buck brush, and weeds galore, it does not take too much time to clean it up.  I never thought there would be a time I wanted the weeds to grow abundantly until we got goats!