Big bucks: feral goats recognised as a serious asset 🐐 | Meet the Ferals Ep 5 | ABC Australia

[Applause] [Music] goats are different from all other feral species because big bucks can be made out of mustering them from the world they're loaded onto trucks and sent off to the abattoir yeah yeah it's a massive turnover yeah one IP double comes you know that can be worth a hundred thousand there's definitely people who've still got that smelly goat kind of feeling about it in the end a lot of the goat produces I talked to us saying that's the smell of money God what a blessing Australia is the world's largest exporter of goat meat driven largely by demand from of all places the USA the US we have a lot of Hispanic or Muslim populations populations that are really familiar with goat meat they use it it's part of their culture it's got no religious issues attached with it so it's a really accessible meat most of what leaves our shores hasn't been farmed it's feral not that it's marketed that way no we don't use the f-word if we can help it generally the industry had rebranded a lot of the the export product to the US as rangeland goats have been in this country since first white settlement brought here for meat and milk without fencing they talked to the vast inland Rangers like it was their own and adapted well to the harsher regions in recent times predation by wild dogs has curved the numbers in Western Australia drought and diligent mustering has also put a big dent in the New South Wales population where fewer than 2 million head were counted in recent aerial surveys the lowest in decades and while many would say that's a good thing there's a fascinating friction between the moneymaker capacity of these Hardy Farrell's and the damage they caused to the landscape the silver eye broom Bush here that was plentiful right across these hill ranges here due to large numbers of goats that were here this is the only plant that I've managed to find in the semi-arid woodland of Victoria's Murray sunset National Park goats have never been welcome a lot of these goats out here getting up to you know 60 80 kilo animals they're quite large goats you only need one of those animals jumping up and down on on a lot of our smaller shrubs out here and and they just do untold damage they trampled the nesting mounds of Mally fails and eat plants that would feed and shelter native animals in 2003 Parks Victoria brought in volunteers sporting shooters shooting is their only way to kill these animals down to a realistic number and it gives the native wildlife a fair chance over the past 15 years up to six thousand goats have been shot in the park and surrounding farmland aerial and ground shooting has also been rolled out in several other Victorian national parks another good ten big Billy's taken out of the park that won't do any more damage we can see that we're actually making a big difference out here now and we're coming back to a better looking country now than what we had eight years ago [Music] goats are adaptable on South Australia's Kangaroo Island they can cling to the side of cliffs while munching on precious native vegetation from their gut samples we found that they eat over 70 plant species most of them are native species about 90% of what's been found in the stomach's of the islands goats is drooping XI oak which just happens to be the only food the endangered glossy black cockatoos will eat if we don't do anything about the goats you know it's just one more thing to the that the grasses have to deal with which is less food basically in 2005 Kangaroo Island decided to get rid of goats it's probably one of the largest Gator eradication attempts in the world in terms of area they shipped so-called Judas goats from the mainland attaching technology which would turn them into traitors that's definitely here in the bottom castle gully the radio-collared goats teamed up with wild herds on the island making it easier for sharpshooters to pick off many animals at a time when we go out and use that Jesus goats the last hunt we removed 40 animals and we only cited four animals without Judas coat so if we were hunt without these guys if it'd be so much more greater the effort paid off in 2018 Kangaroo Island became the largest island in the world to have successfully eradicated feral goats before the goats were eradicated we took photos in areas that we thought were highly impacted by the goats the vegetation in those areas has just come back dramatic lips it's just amazing while goats are undeniably destructive shooting and leaving them to rot is seen by many as a wasted opportunity so for 30 years or more they've been seen in a new light in the 1990s some farmers even started interbreeding the Farrell's with South African borer goats to improve the size and eating quality which is a very fertile animal very Hardy a good mothering ability it's there and by crossbreeding the bra onto that you'll add a better carcass others blended the Farrell's with woolly and gora goats providing both meat and mohair fleece this is a young goat and that's that's good quality mo here can you see the luster and to get started in the new glamour industry Western Australian farmers have had to go into this remote northern station country and muster wild goats the mohair industry goes back to the 1970s at its peak in 1987 we produced a million kilograms but the fiber fell out of favour and the market shrunk mohair traditionally has struggled with this ability of we're against the skin now with a wider gene pool of animals and better fiber technology the industry is experiencing a reboot and the Farrell's still play a part I think in Australia we got the perfect opportunity we've got the country we've got the climate all we do this more stock but mohair is not the main game for most who get into goats increasingly they're being brought in from the world and first like any other livestock animal and fed until they get to the ideal market weight of around 25 kilograms there's even been a series of trials to test what sort of supplementary feeding is worthwhile in the patterson and jake Berghof er were part of one of those trials they run about 2,000 former Farrell's on their southwest queensland property we went into them because we needed to financially and now we can see there's a real viability in it so we're gonna keep building on that we haven't looked back whenever we can now we're fencing it's been our main cashflow producer mentality of using the resources you've got to the best of your ability and I think that's what's happening a lot of the producers out in in western Queensland and Western New South Wales over the last 20 years without goats would have gone bankrupt but it's not an option open to all in the outback while in New South Wales and Queensland pastoralists and lawmakers are very supportive of the rangeland goat industry in South Australia it's a very different story si has always been about killing goats so they don't cause so much environmental damage especially in sensitive spots like the Flinders Ranges while South Australian pastoralists can muster and immediately sell they can't hold the animals behind fences breed and feed like their interstate counterparts can well certainly holding the garden stream a you know if we're going to build our numbers we need you know look at states like South Australia our Lord would be would be very helpful and therein lies the conundrum when pests turn a profit because they're tasty to eat are they still considered feral

Channel: ABC Australia

Views: 606,569

Rating: 4.7234044 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Australia, Landline, Landline ABC, feral animals and pests in australia, pest goats, feral goats in australia, feral goats, goat buck, billy goat, goat hunting australia, goat hunting nsw, goat hunting vic, goat hunting nsw state forest, feral goat hunting, feral goat hunting nsw, pest management, feral animals introduced into australia, pest goat management, wild goat hunting, wild goat mustering, wild goat trap, wild goat catching, wild goats in australia

Id: ZJGvqmKsApk

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020