Story time - My dad asked the local school which had a goat if he can borrow it for a weekend. It was to tame his backyard. As the backyard was enclosed with no chance of the goat escaping, we left it by itself. The goat was be extremely hungry and ate everything insight including the roots, leaves and bark. By Monday, the backyard is barren and took months recover.
In German, there’s an old phrase: “Appointing the goat as gardener”. You use it when somebody is being made responsible for task for which he is not just incompetent, but where he will actually cause damage - for instance because he has ulterior motives.
My sister has a small farm and in addition to cows and horses she also has rabbits. Every spring, parents show up to buy a rabbit to have at home. When the deal is done my sister takes the parents aside and tell them that if they plan or feel by the end of the summer that they want to let the rabbit loose, they can return it for free.
What she does not tell is that our brother-in-law is a chef and happily makes rabbit stew of the returned rabbits. If there was ever a win-win situation, this is it.
> If there was ever a win-win situation, this is it.
Say what? She lies via omission to the parents, forcing them to make an uninformed choice.
Instead of letting a rabbit loose in the wild, they might have sought another home for it, because they didn't want it to die. Your sister's lies mislead them into thinking they can safely return the rabbit.
Doesn't this produce a selection effect against cute rabbits? Parents are more likely to choose cute rabbits, those rabbits become pets, they either get returned and eaten or kept. So non-cute rabbits tend to live longer on the farm, and as such have more offspring and get selected for, and eventually the farm will be covered in ugly rabbits and your sister will not have any clients anymore.
What kind of people adopt a pet, and then release it into the wild? People doing this with cats is one of the reasons stray cats are such a big problem in many places. People dumping cat litters in the woods and what not. And rabbits can be an ecological menace too if allowed to multiply, which they do like rabbits.
Yeah, sounds like a win-win situation alright - the pet rabbit gets slaughtered, the children and parents are lied to. Your sister sounds like a great person.
Another story from a fellow hacker with a backyard goat - It actually starts in a very subtle way. Goats have different tastes and moods, and it's not like they eat everything right away unless the density of a goat per backyard m2 is too high. I started giving mine some free "roaming" time with the chickens every day before the sunset. It looked very innocent - first few days she ate just some weeds, nettle and some low hanging branches of pear trees. No worries, I was planning to cut those anyways. After few weeks of not paying that much attention in the evenings, bottom third of all our ~12 trees were gone, she got into salads, potatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, peppers and cucumbers, all nettle was done, and she started checking out tomatoes (which seemed that she is really really not into at first). I am building a new goat house with it's own separate "backyard" with weeds that she won't be able to escape. :)
I suspect you may be falling to overconfidence there.
Also, single goat? That's tough, I've done it by running the goat with a pack of dogs and treating it as a dog, but witha lone goat, who doesn't feel they have herd, keeping them happy is difficult.
Do you mean the goat is eating the tomato fruit, or the tomato leaves?
The latter are toxic to (AIUI) all monogastrics, same as potatoes and other Solanum family plants - you may want to reign that behaviour in, assuming the animals are still alive.
FYI, we were letting our goats and chickens roam at the same time, but hanging out with the goats and it was fine... until the goats figured out how to squeeze into the chicken run and gobble up the chicken feed.
Apparently they find it super tasty, but it's not vegetarian, so they shouldn't eat it. The chickens get into much less trouble and can roam mostly unsupervised; but we've got a lot of aerial preditors to watch out for.
Lawrence Berkeley National Labs uses goats to tame the brush on the steep slopes surrounding the campus (over 45 degrees in many places). More than once I've had to wait on a bus for the herd of goats to transition across the main access road from one slope to the other.
They're pretty common in most of the East Bay hills. I've always wondered how many different herds there are though. Is it like 1-2 herds per city that move around constantly, or are there dozens of herds that spend a week vacationing in the big city every couple of months before they go back to the farm?
I looked into this for my yard. Unfortunately given how bad of a shape it is, it still would cost multiple thousands to clear with goats. Fortunately, it only costs a few hundred to buy some goats and do it over a longer time, with the bonus of making my niece happy.
in terms of goat's ability to eat almost literally anything, even the things you don't want them to eat, they have a saying in afghanistan (translated from the dari):
The map on this page has some sort of CSS issue in Firefox. It constantly resizes and shakes. Using the page zoom function is enough to get it to eventually stop.
My office landlords hired some goats (not from this company) to tame some overgrown bushes by a river. They arrived in a gutted school bus (which is where they slept over night). As far as I could tell, the procedure is: set up fence around area to be eaten, let out goats, and let them wander and eat for a few days. The end result wasn't very pretty, but it was remarkably effective.
From the perspective of the goats it must feel like they're on a luxury cruise. They get whisked around to new locations every day, they get out and gorge themselves on food, then back on board to the next location and plant buffet tomorrow. Nice lifestyle!
Hiring goats is one of the best methods to fight bush growth, especially if you clamp the high ones so the goats can reach everywhere. Sawing down on the other hand only gives more sprouts and stronger roots for the next years.
I looked into this a couple of times for an urban-ish lot with an overgrown backyard. (I don't have a green thumb!). There were several services in my area, including the awesomely-named Rent-a-ruminant.
Unfortunately, for smaller lots, it just isn't feasible - the way the pricing is structured, the setup fees get you. They are really for multi-acre lots where they set up significant fencing and leave the goats for several days.
Here in Northern Europe they just use GPS-enabled electric collars on the goats, and do literal geofencing with that. Then you don't have any cost of setting up physical fences. Of course you have to accept that the fence position has an inaccuracy 5-6 meters, so it only makes sense for large areas where there is nothing that will kill the goat if it strays a little outside the fence.
Ah nice seeing something like this on HN. In India, it's common to hire goats for another, lets just say complementary reason. Their droppings are really good natural fertiliser. So farmers pay sheep/goat herders to get them to visit their farm for a few days before the sowing season.
Fantastic. I've got 1-1/4 acres that I've paid yearly to have cut. I worry about the workers because they encounter rattlesnakes. I've searched for goats to hire for several years, but not been able to find them. Very glad to discover this!
I second the recommendation. Don't be put off by Jeremy Clarkson and his persona, seeing a motorhead with a big ego trying to run a farm and make a profit is what makes the show. Thankfully, he's paired with someone that knows their stuff, with a sharp enough wit...
My wife and I hired goats from a gentleman on Nextdoor to help clear our backyard in our newly purchased home (like ~10000sqft of overgrowth) - he dropped off 7 goats, and they performed admirably, were extremely calm and well behaved until they ran out of food, at which point they turn into food-hunting, petulant children. If you do this, make sure to get only as many as you need!
I've often seen this done. The Hetch Hetchy pipeline operator uses it to clean up their right of way, which goes up, down, and through hills. Someone puts up a temporary electric fence around the right of way, and they truck in about a hundred goats. The goats graze everything down to bare dirt, and are then moved on to the next section.
I've seen this done with sheep, too. Those are easier to herd but not as agile on rough terrain.
If you're talking about the Listings page, it'll probably display as blank if you have Javascript disabled. It loads a rather large accordion list per-state after the page loads.
We've got a service in Western New York (letsgoatbuffalo.com, clever play on Let's Go Buffalo!). They used an old school bus to transport the goats, which sadly burned down. But, the Western New York community raised $16,000 via a go fund me for a new bus!
I'm kind of surprised someone would use goats for this purpose instead of sheep. Sheep are dumb, docile and easy to manage. Goats are impossible to manage.
Ha, this reminded me of a similar service: goat rental for videoconferences [1] :). It was a hit during the pandemic, with everyone scrambling to combat screen fatigue in creative ways.
At my former working place we had a freelance consultant on retainer who looked into cutting his hours down for health reasons and thus explored new ventures. Because he already had a few sheep he decided to offer sheep rentals as a "biological" lawn cutter.
But there were 2 problems:
Sheep can be somewhat picky eaters, so they let some grass stand. But the bigger problem was, that while his prospective customers liked the idea of having their lawn cut "biologically", they pretty much did not like the sheep droppings the sheep left behind in practice.
I have property in a pretty rural area (Anza, CA) and every goat owner I know says that they're actually picky eaters. But these articles I see pop up now and then pretty much prove the opposite...
I have goats. They are picky eaters. They know what they want and what they don't. They will strip most trees and bushes to the branch. They will eat most grass, but not if it's too tall or has gone to seed or is too dried out. And they'll only eat it down to about 3-4 inches from the ground. There are certain plants I dig out of my pasture because the goats just won't eat them and I don't want them spreading and taking up more space.
There's truth that goats will put most things in their mouths. Almost every time I bring something new into their pen, they check to see if it's food. They'll even check me every now and then just to be sure I haven't become food in the past week. So, sure, you might see a goat pick up a tin can for a brief moment, but you'll also see it spit it out 5 seconds later.
I've got three goats. They're picky, but mine have a pretty good amount of space and a variety of stuff to eat. They've each got their favorites, but crunchy dry cottonwood leaves and our dominant dandelion-alike are at the top of each list.
If you're using goats to clear land, you put more goats per space than the land can sustain, but just for a few days or weeks. The goats will eat their favorite things first, but then also other paletteable stuff. They'll also trample things down pretty good.
In the same vein regarding tackling invasive plants.
In Germany, I came to realize that many cities have unpaid "employees" to tame the city gardens, namely wild ducks, gooses and rabbits.
Thankfully people leave them be, back home they would have been snaped in less than a week.
However as they are used to humans, it also means they make themselves invited guests to any picknick if one doesn't pay attention to the "teams" taking care of the grass.
My dad hired goats to mow down his entire lot in the Hell's Canyon area of Eastern Washington. Saved his cabin from a wildfire, and got the dang thistles reduced to nothing. It was a bargain too, $400.
The head of HPE EMEA is married to the head of Palo Alto networks EMA sales...
They have an amazing home in Auburn, and they have a LOT of goats. My friend, who is married to the ex chief of staff for Cisco also bought a ranch in auburn and they have ~100 goats or so. They rent them out for ~$800 per acre to clear bramble and what not. I spent a week helping them move goats between projects earlier this summer and its a hell of a lot of work.
There are a lot of tech people that went and bought land with goats and have started goat businesses.
When goats eat weeds will they eat and destroy the whole weed? Or do they eat just down to the surface level of the ground which will let the weed grow back immediately?
Depends on the goat and the weed. My goats only like the flowers of dandelion analogues, but for some other weeds, one will try to get the whole thing out and the others just eat the leaves to the ground.
If you put them in a small space, you'll pretty much get bare earth either way though.
Tried hiring a local goat rental to tame my parents' yard, the guy on the phone complained about "this thing called a living wage" that he has to pay his workers. He won't take jobs less than 10 acres or his business runs at a loss. Many cities need regular plant clearing, though, so by reliably selling services to local city and county governments, his business will never fail.
This is amazing, good friend of the family rents out their goats to farmers and friends for the exact same purpose. Reduce pesticide use, naturally improve farm land all the while providing an ideal food source for meat goats, real ESG innovation at work!
In Britain, because they're classed as farm animals you'd need a Movement Order from DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to take one onto a public road, unfortunately.
Uhm, goats are by far the cheapest way to clear out certain kinds of brush and noxious plants. They're also cute and act like dogs.
Pesticides are dangerous and still leave a dead plant, machines jam (and lop off fingers,) doing it by hand takes a long time and can risk major rashes from poison ivy or cuts from thorns.
Part of my back yard is impenetrable from the kinds of plants goats eat.
yitchelle|3 years ago
Moral of the story - keep an eye on the goat.
leobg|3 years ago
mikk14|3 years ago
Bold assumption there. As they say, "if it doesn't hold water it won't hold a goat."
richardw|3 years ago
Not a goat farmer so not sure if goats do that. Anyone know?
29athrowaway|3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girdling
dcastm|3 years ago
vitiral|3 years ago
pagade|3 years ago
jagged-chisel|3 years ago
mingusrude|3 years ago
What she does not tell is that our brother-in-law is a chef and happily makes rabbit stew of the returned rabbits. If there was ever a win-win situation, this is it.
KingMob|3 years ago
Say what? She lies via omission to the parents, forcing them to make an uninformed choice.
Instead of letting a rabbit loose in the wild, they might have sought another home for it, because they didn't want it to die. Your sister's lies mislead them into thinking they can safely return the rabbit.
__dunder__|3 years ago
mtlmtlmtlmtl|3 years ago
jacobriis|3 years ago
dunefox|3 years ago
kinleyd|3 years ago
wszfahwbwbaha|3 years ago
cornel_io|3 years ago
[deleted]
d_rc|3 years ago
h2odragon|3 years ago
I suspect you may be falling to overconfidence there.
Also, single goat? That's tough, I've done it by running the goat with a pack of dogs and treating it as a dog, but witha lone goat, who doesn't feel they have herd, keeping them happy is difficult.
Jedd|3 years ago
The latter are toxic to (AIUI) all monogastrics, same as potatoes and other Solanum family plants - you may want to reign that behaviour in, assuming the animals are still alive.
toast0|3 years ago
Apparently they find it super tasty, but it's not vegetarian, so they shouldn't eat it. The chickens get into much less trouble and can roam mostly unsupervised; but we've got a lot of aerial preditors to watch out for.
stefs|3 years ago
frob|3 years ago
AlotOfReading|3 years ago
redconfetti|3 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQEFH_8fka4
e40|3 years ago
Cockbrand|3 years ago
Two friends meet in a bar.
Says one: "I've bought a goat."
Says the other: "A goat? Where do you keep it?"
"In the bedroom."
"In the bedroom? What about the smell?"
"Well, the critter will have to get used to it."
a_t48|3 years ago
walrus01|3 years ago
if you don't have any problems, buy a goat
flerchin|3 years ago
pineconewarrior|3 years ago
I love these types of bugs. If these guys are going for a "Goat Simulator" vibe (notoriously buggy, part of the charm), they've nailed it.
keyanp|3 years ago
eminence32|3 years ago
qbasic_forever|3 years ago
type0|3 years ago
Hiring goats is one of the best methods to fight bush growth, especially if you clamp the high ones so the goats can reach everywhere. Sawing down on the other hand only gives more sprouts and stronger roots for the next years.
dlgeek|3 years ago
Unfortunately, for smaller lots, it just isn't feasible - the way the pricing is structured, the setup fees get you. They are really for multi-acre lots where they set up significant fencing and leave the goats for several days.
semi-extrinsic|3 years ago
vishnugupta|3 years ago
fluke53|3 years ago
I'm pretty sure people do this, but it's the "it's common" part that bothers me.
It's like saying Indians are vegetarians. All Indians aren't.
11thEarlOfMar|3 years ago
samstave|3 years ago
A friend of mine runs "https://www.scapegoats.net/"
And the head of HPE Sales has something like several hundred goats, but I dont know their site info.
strickman|3 years ago
sph|3 years ago
jppope|3 years ago
widowlark|3 years ago
leaflets2|3 years ago
What more previously do they do then? (When in petulant children mode)
andybak|3 years ago
nvusuvu|3 years ago
MaxBarraclough|3 years ago
codebolt|3 years ago
Animats|3 years ago
I've often seen this done. The Hetch Hetchy pipeline operator uses it to clean up their right of way, which goes up, down, and through hills. Someone puts up a temporary electric fence around the right of way, and they truck in about a hundred goats. The goats graze everything down to bare dirt, and are then moved on to the next section.
I've seen this done with sheep, too. Those are easier to herd but not as agile on rough terrain.
drusepth|3 years ago
If you're talking about the Listings page, it'll probably display as blank if you have Javascript disabled. It loads a rather large accordion list per-state after the page loads.
ericcholis|3 years ago
bleuchase|3 years ago
AndyMcConachie|3 years ago
https://www.rotterdam.nl/wonen-leven/grazers/
I'm kind of surprised someone would use goats for this purpose instead of sheep. Sheep are dumb, docile and easy to manage. Goats are impossible to manage.
Xylakant|3 years ago
PaulDavisThe1st|3 years ago
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/business/local-goatsc...
guiambros|3 years ago
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32435090
probably_wrong|3 years ago
gumby|3 years ago
(A nice example of comments drifting away from the putative topic)
omnibrain|3 years ago
But there were 2 problems: Sheep can be somewhat picky eaters, so they let some grass stand. But the bigger problem was, that while his prospective customers liked the idea of having their lawn cut "biologically", they pretty much did not like the sheep droppings the sheep left behind in practice.
rootw0rm|3 years ago
frob|3 years ago
There's truth that goats will put most things in their mouths. Almost every time I bring something new into their pen, they check to see if it's food. They'll even check me every now and then just to be sure I haven't become food in the past week. So, sure, you might see a goat pick up a tin can for a brief moment, but you'll also see it spit it out 5 seconds later.
toast0|3 years ago
If you're using goats to clear land, you put more goats per space than the land can sustain, but just for a few days or weeks. The goats will eat their favorite things first, but then also other paletteable stuff. They'll also trample things down pretty good.
markdown|3 years ago
Not animals you want around flora you care about.
pjmlp|3 years ago
In Germany, I came to realize that many cities have unpaid "employees" to tame the city gardens, namely wild ducks, gooses and rabbits.
Thankfully people leave them be, back home they would have been snaped in less than a week.
However as they are used to humans, it also means they make themselves invited guests to any picknick if one doesn't pay attention to the "teams" taking care of the grass.
gwbas1c|3 years ago
And, yes, my cousin's goat business is listed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32191666
voxadam|3 years ago
[0] https://www.goatops.com/
flerchin|3 years ago
samstave|3 years ago
They have an amazing home in Auburn, and they have a LOT of goats. My friend, who is married to the ex chief of staff for Cisco also bought a ranch in auburn and they have ~100 goats or so. They rent them out for ~$800 per acre to clear bramble and what not. I spent a week helping them move goats between projects earlier this summer and its a hell of a lot of work.
There are a lot of tech people that went and bought land with goats and have started goat businesses.
fredsmith219|3 years ago
toast0|3 years ago
If you put them in a small space, you'll pretty much get bare earth either way though.
schainks|3 years ago
ryanianian|3 years ago
And cities are starting to do this more regularly too. E.g. NYC's Riverside park was cleared with goats this year. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goats-released-new-york-cit...)
twawaaay|3 years ago
The problem with goats for your nice landscape is that they will nibble at everything including your trees and any shrubbery.
phkahler|3 years ago
lostlogin|3 years ago
imgabe|3 years ago
sverhagen|3 years ago
robbitt|3 years ago
sAbakumoff|3 years ago
chris_wot|3 years ago
The only thing I wonder about is whether the weed seeds would regrow. But I’d imagine clearing it on the second round would be easier.
lwhi|3 years ago
You're welcome!
trissylegs|3 years ago
klik99|3 years ago
CPLX|3 years ago
dont__panic|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
0xPIT|3 years ago
djmips|3 years ago
bluelightning2k|3 years ago
dingleberry420|3 years ago
Joel_Mckay|3 years ago
implements|3 years ago
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sheep-and-goat-keepers-how-to-re...
(Yeah, I'd once looked into using a 'goat and cart' as a from of transport!)
adrianN|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
imwillofficial|3 years ago
fnands|3 years ago
yesilyurt|3 years ago
ggm|3 years ago
LAC-Tech|3 years ago
probably_wrong|3 years ago
owlninja|3 years ago
yreg|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
puchatek|3 years ago
ngcc_hk|3 years ago
ngcc_hk|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
elliottkember|3 years ago
jaimex2|3 years ago
gwbas1c|3 years ago
Pesticides are dangerous and still leave a dead plant, machines jam (and lop off fingers,) doing it by hand takes a long time and can risk major rashes from poison ivy or cuts from thorns.
Part of my back yard is impenetrable from the kinds of plants goats eat.
jppope|3 years ago
jayzalowitz|3 years ago
soledades|3 years ago
zbird|3 years ago