Some of these prairie plants are considered
weeds in any number of different more urban locales. But, how do you choose to get rid of them? Chemicals? Fire? Old fashioned hard work? Well, you might want to try goats. One Iowa company is using targeted grazing
to clean up the landscape and it's a pretty good show. Many years ago herds of animals freely roamed
the prairies of Iowa grazing on a variety of plants and controlling growth. Those conditions are different across the
Iowa landscape today. But an Iowa company called Goats on the Go
is providing targeted grazing to help manage unwanted vegetation in a sustainable way. For some the goal is just to run the goats
through, open things up, make it look better for a little while. But then we have other customers who have
definite conservation goals in mind. They want to restore natural landscapes, native
landscapes and they want to do it without herbicides, they want to do it without much
disturbance and they want to do it on a large scale. So our services run the gamut from both extremes. Goats are much better bushwhackers and weed
eaters than lawnmowers. They thrive in dense vegetation, chomping
and chewing their way through noxious weeds, brush and invasive plants. They'll go up as high as they can reach. They'll push stuff over. And so you really get a good defoliation of
all the species of the plants from about six feet down and then when you choose to pull
them off down to the ground. Goats deal with steep slopes and rough terrain
with little erosion and much less safety risk to humans. In a happy coincidence, they love to eat honeysuckle,
multiflora rose and many other types of invasive vegetation that we humans want to get rid
of. Sheep will eat grass and some weeds, cows
will just eat grass, but goats will eat all of it. So that's the uniqueness of a goat. From little trees to thistles, they'll eat
it. If you look at the protein content of those
plants, that far exceeds some of the best hay we could give our goats. But no other animal can consume and digest
and make use of those nutrients other than a goat. That's kind of what makes them amazing. Goats on the Go brings the animals to the
site, sets up a solar powered electric fence around the area that needs attention, provides
water and has a representative check in on the goats regularly. A typical job for Goats on the Go involves
about 30 to 40 animals, usually taking four to five days per acre. The first time I brought up the subject I
had a lot of people think we were maybe a little bit nuts. But I kept talking it up and finally convinced
everybody that's what we needed to do. The Iowa City School District used Goats on
the Go for multiple projects including one creating a transition from a heavily wooded
area to a play area outside an elementary school. The district had to get approval from Iowa
City and North Liberty officials to have the goats within city limits. The main objective with the goats coming in
here is actually to get rid of a lot of the leafy material and the waist high vegetation. What that does is it makes it a little bit
safer for our operators to go in and chainsaw out any woody vegetation that we don't want
in there, smaller trees, the little saplings. They're just as cost effective as if we hired
a crew of four or five men for a week and paid labor, wages and the equipment itself. So it's pretty much a wash but in the end
it's better because it's friendly to the environment. I'd say that the thing that's most surprising
is how great of a job the goats actually do. I kind of expected mixed results and kind
of thought, well it might be easier just to do it with a heavy duty brush mower. But surprisingly they eat the vegetation all
the way down within inches of the ground. It's unquestionable success. These cute and sometimes goofy grazing goats
aren't just all business. Part of the appeal of Goats on the Go is educational
and yes, entertaining. Goats will be on logs, jumping, head butting,
running around making sounds, they're a lot more fun to watch. I kind of call them the court jester of the
animal kingdom. They're always goofing off doing something
weird. We're constantly amazed at how much people
love goats. The only thing I think people would like more
than goats is if you could train monkeys to do something because that would be funnier. Monkeys with a weedwacker might top goats. Right, might, but people love it. Here at Dewey's Pasture in far Northwest Iowa
about 120 goats spent several weeks munching on about 22 acres of undesirable trees and
brush. If you do nothing they grow up to trees and
some people think that's not a bad thing, but if grassland, wetland dependent critter,
if you will, that's the worst thing in the world. So, you have to do that type of management. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources deals
with land management on a daily basis in parks and natural areas throughout the state. The DNR uses Goats on the Go in some sensitive
grassland and wetland areas with remnant vegetation and native prairie where heavy machinery or
chemical applications are not ideal. And unfortunately one of the reasons why we're
doing this, we don't have a whole lot of burr oak regeneration here because of the tree
and shrub encroachment and a few other factors. These goats will help clean some of that up
and hopefully allow some of that oak regeneration and other savannah type species to blossom
and to happen. But it'll take time, it'll take time. The cost for this service varies depending
on the size of the project and the location. Bigger projects and those closest to Goats
on the Go's home base or one of their representative goat farmers across the state can be more
cost effective per acre. Some people wonder why the model isn't flipped,
why Goats on the Go isn't paying the landowners for feeding their goats. This is a horrible way to feed goats. It's really expensive to do it this way. We would just be feeding goats right here
at home in a convenient pasture if all we wanted was to feed them. So we have bigger aspirations than that. A one-time visit by Goats on the Go won't
permanently solve most vegetation problems. The company works with customers on a comprehensive
strategy to achieve land management goals. Goats are one tool in a toolbox for managing
vegetation. They work great in combination with other
things. If the customer is committed to using goats
and only goats we can have a killing effect on the targeted vegetation over time, but
it typically takes two or three repeat grazings to start to kill the vegetation. In most cases we are opening things up, clearing
it out, setting back the targeted vegetation a little bit so that other vegetation can
compete and we're creating a much more pleasant environment to do some follow-up hand labor,
maybe even some very precise applications of herbicide rather than a broad application
of herbicide. Goats on the Go isn't just in the vegetation
control business, it's in the meat business too. Although the company has been so busy with
grazing projects that there hasn't been much opportunity to sell goats for meat, yet. It's a true definition of a value added product
because we're taking something that was of no value and could not be of any value unless
you put a browsing goat on it and turned it into meat for the community and for Iowans. Really the only thing that's holding us back
is how quickly these guys can reproduce. So we see a need for more goats, we see a
need for more good people to help us out and we definitely want to spread our brand around.
