Brush clearing goats: fact or fantasy?

Steve real simple trick for clearing fence lines with goats,now only use 3 goats to do this,maybe 4 or 5 if they are young.

Polled goats work best for clearing fences because while they are still pretty dumb they are not as likely to get their head hung,they still can get "stuck" but if something was really after them they could get free,polled is just goats without horns,natural or have been removed.

Use 2 16' "cattle panels" tied together at least at the second square,this keeps the panels from swiveling too much.You can  use dog chain snaps to hold them together instead of wires,just put 2 snaps on the one panel clipped to the second panel then put 2 snaps on the other panel clipped to the first,wish i had a picture to show.

You will have one long panel about 31',clip it to your fence corner at one end,put your goats in it then arch it around the goats the the fence you want cleared and clip it to it,but leave them enough room to turn around easily.Keep an eye on them the first few times you do this to see how they act to it.Most animals have to learn what you are doing to them,once they know food is involved they should be fine alone for sometime,see simple right

Lots of good advice here! I'd reiterate quality, free choice mineral (mineral buffet is better) and no tethering untended animals. I'll sometimes bring a goat near me outside on a long lead, then push a step-in fence post through the clip at the end of the lead. They can clean up very specific spots that way. Or clip them to the fence where there are no obstacles. Our livestock does a great job keeping fencelines clear. They also girdled a 10 year old beautiful maple.

I'm on 18 acres in Wisconsin. We have 40 Katahdins (including lambs) this year and we'll soon be down to our foundation herd of 4 dairy goats which are Mini-Nubian and Nigerians. I like the smaller goats because they are easier to manage/move (esp for children), eat less, and THEY DON'T GET AS HIGH INTO THE TREES. My mini Nubian gives me lots of milk but my Nigerians do such a nice job cleaning up under fruit trees without going too high. Mine are all polled or disbudded. We have no guard animals. Donkeys don't share the same nutritional needs and easily get fat. We have perimeter fencing with a strand of barbed along the ground and a strand of hot wire on top. We divide our pastures with electric net and move them every week to 3 weeks, depending on pasture and weather, etc.

Myotonics are great non-fence-jumpers. Meat goats are good at eradicating brush, and nimble enough to get out easily. And get horns stuck. I'd look for kikos, personally.

Our sheep and goats cleared invasive honesuckle, bramble, garlic mustard and poison ivy to almost nothing in 2-3 years from our small woodlot. They would graze it 2, maybe 3 times a year. Repeated grazing is critical. Our first walk up to the woods this spring and all the honeysuckle that is usually near the end of flowering by the time the lambs are old enough to go out, were dry sticks! They didn't come back this year!

Our sheep don't have shelter, other than the dense tree canopy. For the goats' shelter we use XL or L dogloos (igloo dog houses found used or on the curb) and we have a couple window wells on wood frames that we can move around.

I'm not on FB but recently attended a pasture walk on Low Input Meat Goats where the farmer has her goats in dense woods to restore oak savannas, supposedly her FB page is amazing. Cherrie Nolden.

C Davis wrote:I love this topic! My family is also preparing to bring in a few goats. They will be rotational grazing in about 8 acres of woods. We have a ton of kudzu, brambles, and grapevines on the edge of our woods, too.
I have a question for all of you who have experience with rotational grazing in the woods where you move them from one electric netting paddock to another… what do you do about shelter for the goats, since they need shelter from rain? Do you have some sort of lightweight skiddable shelter? I have been trying to come up with a plan for something that the goats won’t be able to knock over/climb on/fall through, yet is light enough to move around in the woods by one person.

C, I built a plywood floor on two pallets that I screwed together, and then built a back wall, two side walls and a sloped roof.  I then covered all in corrugated metal sheeting.  This way I can move the shelter around with the pallet forks on my tractor.  I also put wooden "skis" on the bottom of the two pallets so I could pull the shelter as well with a chain or strap.  Finally, I put 4 brackets with holes on the sides of the skids so I can stake down the shelter.  I use trampoline wind stakes.  I learned the lesson of staking down the shelter the hard way.  One evening we had a storm roll through with really high winds and the shelter tipped over trapping one of the goats underneath it.  Luckily she didn't get injured and is doing okay.  

Thank you for your informative post!

“Myotonics are great non-fence-jumpers. Meat goats are good at eradicating brush, and nimble enough to get out easily. And get horns stuck. I'd look for kikos, personally.”

There is someone local who has myotonic goats for sale. It is good to know that they don’t tend to jump fences. Do they try to climb on things like their shelter?

“For the goats' shelter we use XL or L dogloos (igloo dog houses found used or on the curb) and we have a couple window wells on wood frames that we can move around.”

People around here don’t tend to put things like that out to the curb, but you gave me a great idea! I can get a used IBC tote pretty cheap and turn that into a goat shelter.

Joshua LeDuc wrote:

C Davis wrote:I love this topic! My family is also preparing to bring in a few goats. They will be rotational grazing in about 8 acres of woods. We have a ton of kudzu, brambles, and grapevines on the edge of our woods, too.
I have a question for all of you who have experience with rotational grazing in the woods where you move them from one electric netting paddock to another… what do you do about shelter for the goats, since they need shelter from rain? Do you have some sort of lightweight skiddable shelter? I have been trying to come up with a plan for something that the goats won’t be able to knock over/climb on/fall through, yet is light enough to move around in the woods by one person.

C, I built a plywood floor on two pallets that I screwed together, and then built a back wall, two side walls and a sloped roof.  I then covered all in corrugated metal sheeting.  This way I can move the shelter around with the pallet forks on my tractor.  I also put wooden "skis" on the bottom of the two pallets so I could pull the shelter as well with a chain or strap.  Finally, I put 4 brackets with holes on the sides of the skids so I can stake down the shelter.  I use trampoline wind stakes.  I learned the lesson of staking down the shelter the hard way.  One evening we had a storm roll through with really high winds and the shelter tipped over trapping one of the goats underneath it.  Luckily she didn't get injured and is doing okay.  

Oh my! Thank you for sharing your experience. I did not think of having to stake down the shelter, but that makes sense, especially if it need to be lightweight enough for me to pull by myself.

We have a local couple who lease out goats to manage bramble.  They bought goats to naturally manage blackberries in their creek because the local council  was threatening to spray the blackberries - yep.......  you got it, putting poison in the creek!!  And then send them a bill for $20,000.  So goats it was.  Then friends borrowed them and now they have a business.
So, try goats rather than risking ripped arms. https://www.drycreekfarm.com.au/goat-hire
  Perhaps this could be another arm of business and then the mohair to spin, maybe?

@Joshua Frank -

Did you ever find a goat rental in the Hudson Valley?  I met one, based in Beacon (right now his goats are in CT, I think).  I'll get his contact info if you need it.

I am thinking about getting goats to help clear our land. While I see the normal brush and small trees, a few brambles we also have lots of Bracken fern. Now I have concerns about my plan since I have learned that bracken are poisonous in all parts of the plant and that this causes the development of bladder, stomach and other cancers. The toxin deposits in milk and meat of omnivores and can be passed to consumers. I was researching the allopathic effects of bracken  on surrounding plants when I came across this. Am I making too much of this or should I consider other ideas for clearing some of the woods?

Yup,  my Katahdin hair sheep were excellent at both grazing and browsing.  They'd easily clear out poison ivy,  multiflora, knotweed, shrubbery, saplings, sumac...   only a very few things they wouldn't eat.   I grazed them for a little time in a mature apple orchard and they did a GREAT job of clearing it out and pruning up the suckers to about shoulder on a human height.  Young trees they'd probably damage if left in too long, but mature trees had no problems.  I used to have before/after orchard pictures, maybe I can find them.

I never kept goats,  my sheep were pretty easy to contain.   And between trained dogs and a bucket of grain,  calling them in at night from anywhere on the property was super simple to put them away.   Moving huge amounts of electronet in the blazing heat of summer was a giant drag, on top of working full time away from home.  But I kept about 20 sheep plus lambs on about 5 acrea with really intensive rotational grazing.

I have used goats for years to clear brush, and they're brush eating machines.  Even thorny brush.  Even thistles.  I'm amazed at what they eat.  They're much smarter than sheep and they focus on different types of feed so be careful.  You can find them standing on the roof of your truck, sneaking into your home, agitating your dogs and they pretending to be a victim, and a great deal more mischief.  I don't have any currently for one reason, I don't have any brush removal projects.

I recommend them.

Steve Smyth wrote:Speaking to the picketing concerns:

Never picket an animal without a responsible human keeping tabs on them.

I am leaning towards portable electric fencing.

Do you all think than Nubians would be a good breed to start with?

Thanks.

I have Nubians, as well as Oberhaslis and a Saanen, and they are doing a great job on our brush but I mainly have these breeds because we want the milk. Nubians can be pretty bony. It sounds like what you need is meat breeds. Of the dairy breeds probably Saanen would be closer to a meat body type. Maybe better to go with Boer, or Kiku or something like that.

Also I would suggest you get wethers since you aren’t planning to breed or milk. They are usually a lot cheaper or might be free and will probably cause far less drama than does in heat or stinky and possibly aggressive bucks.

Krista Galitsis wrote:I am thinking about getting goats to help clear our land. While I see the normal brush and small trees, a few brambles we also have lots of Bracken fern. Now I have concerns about my plan since I have learned that bracken are poisonous in all parts of the plant and that this causes the development of bladder, stomach and other cancers. The toxin deposits in milk and meat of omnivores and can be passed to consumers. I was researching the allopathic effects of bracken  on surrounding plants when I came across this. Am I making too much of this or should I consider other ideas for clearing some of the woods?

I’ve seen mixed reports on the toxicity of bracken fern. I do notice that even when our goats have eaten down all other brush in an area, the bracken is untouched or just barely nibbled. Pretty sure the goats are saying it’s toxic or at least unpalatable. They also don’t touch foxglove or rhubarb. Looove thistles and nettles.

Heather Staas wrote:
Yup,  my Katahdin hair sheep were excellent at both grazing and browsing.  They'd easily clear out poison ivy,  multiflora, knotweed, shrubbery, saplings, sumac...   only a very few things they wouldn't eat.   I grazed them for a little time in a mature apple orchard and they did a GREAT job of clearing it out and pruning up the suckers to about shoulder on a human height.  Young trees they'd probably damage if left in too long, but mature trees had no problems.  I used to have before/after orchard pictures, maybe I can find them.

A former coworker told me how they got some sheep to graze down the grass in their orchard and around the yard. Apparently the sheep ate the wood siding off their old farmhouse instead. He said they got the wrong breed of sheep. This was years ago and I am still regretting that I did not ask what kind of sheep they had.

We got a couple of the big plastic (i know, yuck) calf shelters that are made for a small group of calves for our goats. We are pretty minimalist here and don't have a barn but goats need a little more protection than sheep so they need something. This dome shelter can tip up to it's side and roll (easier with 2 people because it wants to flop on it's top) and we can drag it with our garden tractor or probably by hand. I love it and so do the goats. The ventilation in the top means it will likely never catch in the wind and get destroyed or hurt its inhabitants.  It's 8-9' diameter and works well for probably up to 10-12 goats.

If you do something like this you could position it in a corner of your pasture rotation plan so that it's either not moving or not moving as much as they get moved around.

Maybe I already shared that goats supposedly prefer 80% browse and 20% graze and sheep are the inverse. That seems about right.

As for bracken,  an older question, I think I'd try scything it first. When there are green things to eat, that is generally preferred over anything dried. Also, goats don't eat hay and such off the ground so they'd probably leave it, especially when they have other options. So make sure they have plenty to eat.