Managing weeds with goats
Submitted By: sgraham
Location: Bega Valley, NSW
Land Type: Rural Retreat
Affected by Severe Weather?: No
What weed/s are you managing?
Blackberry, cobblers peg
What is your weed management strategy?
Use a herd of goats
What have you learnt about managing weeds this way?
Often people have blackberry shrubs that are three or four metres tall, and the use the goats initially will allow the property owners to access a part of their land that they hadnt seen or been able to access for years because of the blackberry.
What have been the benefits and drawbacks?
I find goats to be a good alternative to herbicides for a range of different weeds. There’s always the question will the goats eat cobbler’s peg or St John’s wort or fireweed or blackberry? Over time we’ve learned more and more about their usefulness and what they can tolerate. Goats are tremendously useful in the control of blackberry. Because they are browsing animals, they can eat the green shoots, leaves, flowers and fruit of most plants, and blackberry is a particular favourite. They won’t eat the dead stems from previous years’ growth, but they will eat everything else, and they trample down the dead stems, so if you leave the goats to it they will completely decimate the blackberry shrubs. We have also learned that you need to put the goats back on the blackberries repeatedly, maybe three, four times over a couple of years before the blackberry plant actually dies. Goats are not particularly fond of cobbler’s peg, but they will eat it, and it doesn’t affect their health to a great extent if they are on cobbler’s peg for a short period of time. There is often quite a very large seed bank of cobbler’s peg in the soil and the goats can’t affect that, but they will eat the plants and flowers that are coming up, and in this way they reduce the spread and the proliferation of this plant over time.
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