Goats
Controlling invasive noxious weeds is required by Nebraska weed laws, but what if one weed species is so obnoxious it just won’t go away! What can a person do? Send in a herd of goats to chew them off is one solution.
Don Reeves and his family who own grazing land in Howard County northeast of St. Paul, Neb., this summer “rented” goats testing this solution on their land.
Leafy spurge is the particular pest. Its roots grow deep so the plant is resistant to most herbicides. When the seedpods open, the plant can throw or “spit” the seed 15 feet from the parent plant. Cultivation won’t kill it. Ranchers fight to keep it from spreading, which is the best they can do. Some county weed districts have quarantined hay that contains leafy spurge to control its spread. Leafy spurge is poisonous to cattle when ingested; it contains a skin irritant, which makes it difficult for the animal to eat or drink after ingesting the weed - and cattle avoid grazing near leafy spurge.
“We do chemically spray the weeds to provide some control, but we wanted a natural solution, so we wanted to try goats,” said Reeves.
Don, his brother Ladd, and sisters Virginia Fraser and Kay Owens volunteered their land for an invasive plant treatment demonstration to the Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition. The NGLC is a nonprofit group of ranchers united to help their fellow ranchers with range management and natural resources issues. NGLC receives some sponsorship from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
The Reeves siblings entered a two-week experiment with the NGLC to bring nearly 600 goats on their property to feed in a closely confined area on weed patches. The goats are confined behind portable electric fence. The enclosure, or paddock, is generally about two-thirds of an acre but can vary with the amount of fencing and area needing control.
The paddock is moved about every 12 hours, depending on the amount of plant material, because the goats are very effective in eating the weeds.
“The goats pretty much chew the plant off. We will have to watch the long-term impact on the plants because the roots are still there,” said Don Reeves. The NGLC hired the Grazing Operation Attuned to Soils (G.O.A.T.S.) company to transport and supply the goats, fencing and management of the herd movement during the two-week trial.
Michelle Wendell, G.O.A.T.S. owner, said, “This is a biological process of weed and tree control. The goats’ chewing and digestive process destroys the seeds, so the eaten seeds are not replanted with the manure. The manure is also smaller and more spread out than cattle manure, so it adds to the soil organic matter quicker.”
Don Reeves said, “For six of the last 15 years we have been strictly using the herbicide Plateau and focusing on the timing of spraying to limit the leafy spurge patches. We tried other products in other years, but they are not as effective.”
The Reeves family is also using improved grazing management and prescribed burning to try and control weed and cedar trees. “This spring we burned one pasture of about 200 acres. We got rid of some trees, but the burn would have been more effective under better weather conditions.”
The Reeves family has an Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) contract through NRCS that has helped them divide up their 1,440 acres into eight smaller pastures. With some funds from EQIP, and some from their own pocket, the Reeves put in cross fences and watering tanks fed through underground pipeline. This will allow the Reeves to better utilize their grass by rotating the cattle between pastures compared to continuous grazing.
Using many methods, like grazing, burning, herbicide and mechanical treatment, may provide a better solution long term. Many neighboring farmers and ranchers, who took part in a tour on the Reeves’ land, viewed the results of the goat project this fall.
One prominent rancher on a tour was heard to say, “I’ve got 700 acres of goat-proof fence (land fenced to contain goats). Mixing goats with cattle is becoming more sociably acceptable. Better weed control and plant usage would be mixing cattle, sheet and goats together. But an old rancher’s tradition of not mixing sheep and cattle on grazing land still exists!”
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