Invasive Plants

[Baystatetom]

Here in Middle New England I am constantly battling invasive plants. Oriental Bittersweet, and common and glossy buckthorn are the biggest problems in the woods but multiflora rose, barberry, burning bush, Autumn olive and many others take over pasture land, dormant fields and hedge rows. As a consulting forester I have to be on the look out for these things on every woodlot before and after harvests.
I have two reasons for saying all this. First be sure you are always on the lookout for this stuff. A few bittersweet vines in a shady understory are easy to deal with, but giving it just a little sunlight and a couple years to grow and you have a major problem.
Secondly is control. I spray herbicides and so far, it is far and away the only way to deal with the stuff. Even clients that are quite apposed to chemicals give up after just one season and agree that they just can’t gain ground organically. I still think on that the scale I usually work chemical treatment is the only way to go. But, wouldn’t it be great if we could use sheep/goats/highland cattle etc to chew this stuff up. It would require a bunch of electric fence and a number of animals. They would also have to be brought back onto the same parcel for several years in a row. But you could charge the landowner for the service while at the same time providing your herd with pasture. Making $300-$500/acre grazing invasive plants would make raising sheep a lot more profitable.

Anybody ever try this?

[Robert MoonShadow]

Hey Baystate! Its what I do, to diversify my produce and rabbits…I custom graze my small goat herd aiming at Canandian, bull, and yellow star thistle, multifloral rose, spotted knapweed…
The girls have literally ran pass a bale of alfalfa for the rose. I charge a base rate of $5/day, and it goes up from there. 15 goats, 4-6 rolls of electric netting, 2 battery fence chargers. In fact, I took out an ad on CL specifically saying I only work this county…after 5 pleas, I am now booked on (so far) 4 jobs in the Clarkston/Lewiston areas 80 miles away! At $50 extra fuel charge (each site) & at least double my daily rates…and most of them gladly water & oversee the girls- I’ll just show up to move them around every 5 or 7 days. In fact, I’ve just got an email today from someone who has “several hundred acres of star thistle…” I’m referring them to Ray (quit counting at 8,000 head) and/or his ex (700+ head). They charge by the acre ($50 per). I fill the small parcel niche. So, yeah, goats work…and as for the point about having to bring them back in for several years; haven’t seen an area yet get sprayed that didn’t need it repeated.
Plus there’s personal benefits: never see the client send out their kids to watch the sprayer work, huh? I love it = “Are you a pirate?” “Yup – see the eyepatch?” “AND a pirate?!?” “Yup – see the goats?”
Ever see a kid hug a can of weed-be-gone? Me neither. :rolleyes:

[near horse]

I know of someone in CA that uses their goats for fire suppression work – eating/clearing brush around home sites in fire prone areas. They also got contracts on some “right-of-ways” – like where power lines run over head. Like Robert’s experience, they’re booked.

Also, there’s been more than a bit of work at some universities looking at what/how young animals learn to eat “novel” or new foods – like a weed species.
In our area at the University of Idaho Range Department is Karen Launchbaugh and another big name in Utah is first name? Provenza. Can’t recall which school he’s at.

[Baystatetom]

Right on Pirate. I can’t say I am a huge fan of chemicals myself, but I have sprayed a few properties that most people would have written off as too far gone, and got them back in three years, also our crew of three can cover a huge acreage in a day. We use backpack mist blowers with the minimum amount of herbicide and put it just where we need it. I also know I make better money spraying then I do marking timber these days. If you are that busy raise your rates! Just kidding make a honest days pay for a honest days work, don’t ask for less or more.
Glad to hear others are into it! I just may start picking up a herd of weed eaters myself. Being a forester I know about whats going on in the understory of my oak/pine forest and don’t know much about open stuff. Although I have done a few knappweed jobs. Pretty tough to pick that stuff out from everything else when you are being selective with herbicides.
~Tom

[Robert MoonShadow]

Hey Tom – I doubled my rates & added a $200 delivery charge split 4 ways & they still lined up for it! I haven’t had the nerve yet to add a surcharge for the “custom fertilizing” of their lots. 😀
Goats aren’t as selective/accurate in identifying the weed as you need to be w/ the spray…their philosophy is: If it tastes good, EAT IT!! If it DOESN’T taste good, trample it and poop on it.
Be warned, though; owners love it when they eat the multifloral roses taking over the pasture/woodlot…not so much when they get out and eat their prize roses by the door.
Again, don’t ask me how I know…:rolleyes:
Another aspect to consider: the way they browse, they also remove ladder fuels & ‘prune up’ the bottom of trees, opening up the forest floor.

[OldKat]

@near horse 27526 wrote:

I know of someone in CA that uses their goats for fire suppression work – eating/clearing brush around home sites in fire prone areas. They also got contracts on some “right-of-ways” – like where power lines run over head. Like Robert’s experience, they’re booked.

Also, there’s been more than a bit of work at some universities looking at what/how young animals learn to eat “novel” or new foods – like a weed species.
In our area at the University of Idaho Range Department is Karen Launchbaugh and another big name in Utah is first name? Provenza. Can’t recall which school he’s at.

He was at Utah State last I knew. He has done some fantastic work on training animals to eat noxious / invasive weeds & brush that they wouldn’t normally eat.

Here is a link to his curriculm vitae:

http://www.cnr.usu.edu/files/uploads/WILD%20Vitaes/ProvenzaResumeCitations.pdf

[OldKat]

Robert, what breed are your goats? And have you seen anything on some breeds being more prone to eating the brushy species than others? We haven’t historically seen many goats were I live, but in the past 12 to 15 years we have started seeing more and more Boer goats in our area.

From what little I have watched them they don’t seem to be too keen on eating the brush and forbs like the old Spanish goats did, but that is just a very casual observation. I have heard that the areas 300 or 400 miles west of me where they have always raised a whole lot of goats have also switched over to the Boer or Boer/Spanish cross and their loss to predators has soared. The thinking is that the larger, almost all white Boers are easier for the predators to see at night. I dunno, guess so.

I did see one thing that I never thought I would see and that is someone grazing goats behind a standard 5 strand barbed wire fence and they were staying put! There is a guy that has pasture land in the eastern gamma grass bottoms along the creek south of town where I live. He has about 50 or 60 Boer goats and he just puts them in one pasture or another just like they were cattle and I’ll be darned if they aren’t staying where he puts them; no gaurd dog or anything. That would NOT work with Spanish goats, they would be gone by the time he drove out the front gate. Haven’t figured out if the goats are eating the gamma grass or the weeds that are growing up in it. Have to investigate further.

[dominiquer60]

I was just talking to a CSA customer that recently moved here from Texas. She had a few goats before she moved and noticed that her Spanish goats would eat anything and loved poison ivy. The other breeds were pickier about what they ate, but the group as a whole did good at keeping the back of the lot clean. Just thought I would add since it goes along with what Old Kat noticed.

Erika

[Robert MoonShadow]

Oldkat – I started with 3 dairy does – mostly Nubian/Saanen/Alpine w/ a dash or two of LaMancha – and 3 Boer x Spanish does (love those “bearded ladies”!). I then got a very tall Nubian x Alpine buck. After 4 years, I’ve got a nice blend of genes that has the heat-tolerance, weight, & multiple birthings of the Boer, the hardiness of the Spanish, and the height and added milk of the dairies. The white in the Boers & crosses makes it easier for me to se them on the mountain side…and face it, the predators can find them easy enough, regardless of color! 😡 But Boers are ‘short and squat’…and thus a lot slower – ‘devil (or predator) gets the hindmost! Just my opinion, really.
I’ve never noticed the Boers being picky eaters..but then mine are crossed w/ the Spanish blood. They can’t get as high up on the brush as I’d like them to (especially useful on the rose, to get all the hips – or “goat-candy”), which is the reason I added the dairy breeding. The breeds I’d like to add are:
* Cashmere = thick undercoat for winter survival
* Kiko = supposed to be every bit as good for meat production as the Boer w/ better feet
* Kinder = originally developed by a couple of women in western Washington in the 80s from a Pygmy buck and a dairy breed (I forget which one). A small dual-purpose goat that’s reknown for multiple births each time – as in, their record is 6! Lots of quads & quints…triplets are the norm – and plenty of rich milk to nurse them!!
For now, I’m happy w/ my “Pirates”. 😀
Oh, I suspect that your neighbor has that barbwire electrified…my Boers dance through 4-strand on their way to the equally sharp roses.
If anyone’s really interested in goats (I hope so, or else I REALLY overdid it on this post), there’s a university out of OK. I believe that has an excellent download on all things goatish for free.
Word of warning: keep the goats away from wild cherry, azealas, rhodedendrums (sp?), and, I believe, mt. laurels unless you want a dead goat.
Erika – I didn’t know that they like poison ivy…never noticed, before. Thanks! I’ll add that to the list I advertise.

[dominiquer60]

Some like poison ivy. I once had a pair of cashmere twin does that were a menace to their owner because they were bottle fed and would not stay with the goats or sheep, so she sold them to me for brush control. Perhaps it was because they were papered when they were younger, or perhaps it was because they were cashmere, but I basically had to starve them before they would eat much more than sumac in the hedge rows. When my CSA member talked about her goats and poison ivy, I said “no way, not unless they are starving.” That was when she got more specific that the spanish/ spanish crosses were the ones happy to eat the ivy, the others were more picky.

After listening to them call out to be with us from across the field for a whole summer, I decided that they just needed to be someones pets, and they still are.

Erika

[Baystatetom]

My daughters team of jersey steers would eat the poison ivy first. Of course then they would lick you with that rough cow tongue and grind it right into your skin.
I think I would try a mixed herd, maybe sheep, goats and a steer or two. I hear that electric netting type fence keeps coyotes and dogs at bay pretty well.

[Robert MoonShadow]

The netting sure helps – the combination of a (visually) physical barrier and then the snap they get when they explore it tends to deter them…works best on dogs/coyotes. The best type is the alternating strands that are pos/neg – “self-grounding”, in that the animal becomes the ground. More expensive, of course, but less hassle with creating adequate grounding on dry ground. A sheep/goat combined herd would really clean up both the forbs and the brush!

[Baystatetom]

A friend just emailed me this video, you got watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQev3UoGp2M&feature=player_embedded

[Robert MoonShadow]

Oh that’s just too funny! Those look like Kiko goats…maybe I ought to reconsider getting Kikos… the next video w/ the baby goat on the temple walls looks just like my Daphne – that’s what the Boer/dairy crosses look like.

[Author]

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