The Living Landscape: Gotta love goats
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – It's another quintessential storybook spring day, replete with green growth aplenty.
Grapevines are budding out, oaks and alders are starting their showy spring displays of living art in the form of catkins.
Catkins are the long, dangling male flowers which release pollen into the wind in order to wind-pollinate.
Along with the impressionistic haze of green in every shade imaginable now, are wildflowers in an incredible array of colors that are popping in patches of soil nearly everywhere.
With all of the lush bounty in orchards, valleys and woods, land managers of all ilk are putting elbow-grease into mowing and removing potentially flammable material.
You may have seen some of the “live lawnmowers” around the county in the form of goats or sheep corralled together munching and crunching on grass and shrubs.
These industrious creatures are helpful in reducing fuel loads to a manageable level.
Sheep are known to feed on herbaceous growth, while goats will consume woody material.
Some farmers have found that grazing on large tracts of the landscape is even more advantageous than simply mowing, and usually turns out to be quite cost-effective.
Demand for renting grazing goats is a growing business across California and the West, with homeowners, golf courses, government agencies and even some fire departments such as those in Ventura County making use of the goats' clearing abilities.
Thanks to the goats' voracious appetites they can chomp up to 12 pounds of vegetation per day, all while navigating those hard-to-reach places on hilly terrain.
Goats consume a wider variety of growth than do cattle, which prefer grasses and sedges.
A herd of 170 goats is recorded as consuming 2,000 pounds of green brush in a single day.
The strong animals are able to extend themselves up on their back legs and reach leaves and branches up to 7 feet high.
An added advantage goats present is that unlike us, they do not mind going into stands of poison oak, and they may be good at ridding the land of invasive species.
A disadvantage to running goats is that they are not allowed into areas where rare and endangered plants are known to thrive.
Running a goat-rental business takes some investment and planning strategies. Goat herds require livestock trailers, portable fencing and folks to attend to the goats and oversee them for safe-keeping.
Goats aren't said to solve every problem, but they are definitely a great tool in the kit that includes regular mowing, clearing and where deemed necessary, prescribed burns.
For a list of Lake County agriculture members, some of whom hire out their goats, visit http://www.lakecountyfarmersfinest.org/agricultural_members.html .
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.”