Brush Clearing
These goats would love to eat your invasive plants and other unwanted foliage! Clear your brush without chemicals or hard labor.
Happy goats
Busy at work
Before goats
Another section of the same area before goats
After goats (the brush previously was in the woods along the edge of the yard)
Oscar munching on some rose. Thorns don't bother goats.
Meet brothers Oscar, Basil, and Dill. Their idea of a first-class meal includes (but is not limited to)
-invasive rose
-poison ivy
-bittersweet
-Japanese knotweed
-honeysuckle
-blackberry
-porcelain berry
-garlic mustard
-autumn olive
-burning bush
There are some plants that are dangerous to goats. These include but are not limited to
-yew
-rhodedendron
-juniper
How it works:
We come check out the area you want cleared, and as long as everything looks safe for goats and feasible for fencing, we agree upon a start date. We bring the goats, their portable electric fence, their shelter, and their water dish. We set them up in the area you want cleared. We come and check on them periodically, and they stay until the job is done. If you have vines with foliage, we'll pull down what we can to help the goats take full advantage of the menu. You get your brush cleared plus the added bonus of some friendly guests for a few days or more (depending on the scope of your job).
Goats are particularly useful for clearing wooded areas where you can't mow and you want to keep the trees, but you'd like all the vines and invasive brush gone. Note that goats do not eat the roots, so the plants will grow back, although goats can be helpful for keeping invasive plants in check, and repeated grazing can eliminate them over time. Also, goats have an acidic digestive system that destroys seeds.
Cost: Base fee of $350 for approx. 145 feet of fence. $50 for each additional fence up to four segments. The pricing is per job, not per day—you're paying to get your job finished. Additional costs may be involved if your area is particularly difficult for fence set-up, for example if we have to do a substantial amount of clearing to make a path for the fence. Our goats can travel within 30 min of Harvard, but there is an additional mileage fee for locations more than 20 min from our farm. Contact us for an evaluation.