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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. Many of you listening right now might have a similar problem that I have at home. Massive blackberry bushes and carpets of ivy have taken over a section of our yard. My wife and I have tried to keep up with these fast-growing plants, but it's been no use, so recently, we decided to hire a crew to come in and rip out these invasive plants. That crew was smelly, uncommunicative, and rather stubborn. That's okay, because the crew was made up of goats. Today on the show, I'm going to invite you into my backyard to see how a herd of grazing goats can help beat back the ravages of some of our Pacific Northwest invaders. First, I'm going to switch seats in the studio and let my colleague Rebecca Hansen white interview me about this very organic landscaping plant. Well, I have to say, this is a bit unusual. I'm Michael Dunne, the host of Oregon on the record, and I normally sit in the interviewer's chair, but today, our own Rebecca Hanson White is in that chair, and she'll be interviewing me about a recent experience I had with goats.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: Glad to be here asking the questions.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, you're in my chair! What's going on here?
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: Okay, why did you want to hire goats?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, I think, like a lot of folks, our backyard really got away from us. We have so many invasive blackberries and Ivy. And so, my wife and I were thinking about, what can we do? And so the options were, we could hire a crew? Well, I guess the options are, we could do it ourselves, but we failed miserably at that. We could look to hire landscapers or something to do it and that's certainly a reasonable option, but it is expensive. And then, of course, we were thinking about using chemicals, and that's something we didn't want to do. So, I did a little research and found out that you could hire a service where goats would come in and they would eat all that stuff. And so, yeah, we were intrigued by the idea. It seemed like a great, sort of environmentally friendly thing to do, and it just sounded kind of cool.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: I mean, I'm a fan of blackberries, because sometimes I get hungry when I go on a hike, but I know not everyone is. Where'd you find this go BlackBerry removal service?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, well, in answer to that question about blackberries, I mean, in our yard, they're just treacherous, they're just awful. But no, you know, doing some internet research, I found an organization called AgriGraze and I should tell listeners that it seems like more of these types of services are up in the more populated areas, like Portland and whatnot, Multnomah County. So, if you're looking to do this, you know you might find an organization that works for you, but they may charge more to come to a place like Eugene or Lane County, just for travel costs and whatnot, but basically it was an internet search. It seems like it's a growing thing. And what I wasn't sure about was if, if our yard was, you know, too small for them. But this organization, AgriGraze that I contacted, it's kind of a startup. He's only been in business for a couple years. A couple years, and so I think you know for him, no business, no yard was too small to send out his, his, his four-legged crew.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: Did these goats, did they meet your expectations?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah. I mean, I should say, you know, he brings out a lot. I when I talked with him, and he talked, you know, he, what he did was he got my address so he was able to do kind of a Google search and see the property and kind of get it, get a spec for how big it was, and then I sent him some photos and videos of it, and he and he told me, yeah, that's something we could do. And he was going to bring between 75 and 100 goats. And at first, I thought, Oh, my goodness. I had no idea that it would take that many and how he would transport them and so on and so forth. But, yeah, I'd say it did meet my expectations. You know, they were there for two days, and we had a huge number of blackberries and a lot of ivy. And so, the first day, they really did strip all of the leaves and fruit from the blackberries. They left, you know, they left canes. But they really did get rid of a lot of those. And then the second day, they worked on the ivy and stuff. So, I mean, had I hired a crew of guys wearing gals with a bunch of tools and stuff like that, they probably could have gotten it to be like bare earth, and the goats didn't do that. But it really gave us, I think, you know, it gave us back our hillside. And it was really cool. As my wife commented, it was very peaceful just watching them work. They weren't loud. They just kind of spread out and did what they needed to do. And it was, it was kind of a blast just watching them work.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: Is there any downside to having 50 goats in your yard?
MICHAEL DUNNE Well, I mean, obviously you want to make sure that the goats are going to graze where you want them to graze. And so, the guy, Steve, who owns this operation, brought out electric fencing and stuff like that to kind of keep them contained. You know, I'd say that the downsides are, yeah, I mean, you're going to get a lot of poop. Okay, that's just, that's just the way it is. Can you say poop on the radio? I just did, yeah, I mean, you're going to get, you know, it's going to smell, it's going to there's going to be poop, but it's for not that big of a deal. In all honesty, it was a quick broom and stuff was taken care of. So, you know, the only downside, like I said, is, you know, they can do what they can do. As he mentioned, towards the end of the day, they were getting bored with the stuff that we were presenting to them, the blackberries in the ivy, they started stripping bark off some of the trees and stuff. So, yeah, I mean, a crew that's being paid. I mean, they might do a better job overall, just because, you know, they can see everything in front of them and just go. These are goats. They're going to eat. That's what they do. But they might, you know, decide I've had enough for the day. So, it's not a crew you can kind of motivate with, with cash or bonuses or anything like that.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: When we think about weeders and, you know, electric saws and chainsaws, they are noisy, a little polluting sometimes. Is that why you were like, I think, I think I'd like an organic or a goat solution?
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, you know, I think a, you know, we're in a densely populated neighborhood and stuff. And, yeah, I think that, you know, weed whackers and chainsaws, everything is very noisy. Like I said, this was incredibly quiet, obviously, with the way the portable fencing worked, it certainly contained them and didn't bother a person, even his trailer. And we live on a fairly narrow street, and he had a big trailer, you could imagine, to deliver 75 goats. It didn't block traffic, and it was, it was magical to see him herd these goats out of a trailer, down our driveway with the right fencing, and into our yard, I mean, and he had a border collie with him that did a great job. It was really fascinating to see, you know, like I said, more animals and feet and hooves than have ever been on our property, you know, concentrated in one area in a fairly efficient manner.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: And last but not least, which goat was your favorite goat, or better yet, which goat was the G.O.A.T.?
MICHAEL DUNNE: I don't know if I can answer that. One of the cool things is, goats come in so many varieties, so many sizes, so many colors. They really, especially if they're on your property and you're spending some time looking at it, they're really quite beautiful. And so some of the smaller goats with multiple colorings and dappling’s, they're just beautiful. They really, really are. There was one, and there was a kind of alpha goat, and there was one that was probably one of the biggest and had the biggest horns. And the other goats tend to follow, tend to follow that goat. What was really cool is sometimes they cooperate like a bigger goat will sometimes bend down some of the canes from the blackberries so that other goats can actually eat them, the smaller goats and whatnot. So, I don't have a goat of goats, but yeah, I'm very pro goat after this experience.
REBECCA HANSEN-WHITE: All right. Well, thank you, Michael, so much for joining me on your show.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, it's the least I could do. Thank you so much for your questions. Let's head to my backyard to hear about how goat landscaping works. I'm working with a company called AgriGraze and they've brought a bunch of goats to work on the hilly slope in my backyard to remove what has been, and I imagine, for many people, the most stubborn plants, Ivy and blackberry anyone can imagine. But today, nearly one hundred four-legged workers are going to be munching and crunching on these invasive species, so that, hopefully, someday our Hill will become usable once again. So right now, I'm gonna introduce you to Steve Weaver, who brought his goats to my backyard to clear out the undergrowth.
STEVE WEAVER: This is our second full grazing season. We started. It would have been this summer, the previous summer, so the previous summer, before that, we started in kind of the fall, kind of started out with a couple goats. We, me and my family. We bought, you know, 11 acres, so we had some pasture. I have three kids, and my fourth is on the way. And congratulations, and thank you. We decided to get some goats. And I just was like, I kind of want to breed them. Started, kind of. Getting more and more, I think I had about six at the time, and then I had somebody call me and say, Hey, I need you to come eat my blackberries for me with those goats. So, it kind of started on an idea in my head or a thought. So, I started doing some research, and just kind of said that I found other people that did this, and so just been kind of a learning experience for the past couple years, you know, trying to grow with, you know, the amount of work we have, and just kind of growing our herd.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tell, tell our listeners about the setup today. How does that all sort of, you know, come to fruition? What do you need to do for preparation? And then, kind of, how does it work throughout the day?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah. So, a typical, typical day of hauling for me. I typically get up in the morning, I'll load up the goats from my property. We'll load them up. We have our 24-foot goose neck double decker stock trailer. It holds roughly around 150 goats. And we'll load them up there. We'll tear everything down, and then we'll go to the job site, and we will, I'll take a look at the perimeter. If it's a good fence, I won't set up any fencing if it feels like it's goat proof fencing like No, no, no. Fencing is great fencing for goats. But to most different fences, some, some of the better fences, will hold goats just fine. Well, obviously, like we did today, put up some temporary netting, electrified netting, that contains them within a certain area. My job is to kind of monitor, make sure nobody's heads get stuck in the fence, make sure they don't find an escape route. And then I watch the health of the herd, and that's kind of an ongoing thing for me all year long, winter time, summertime, when they're grazing, I just monitor their health, making sure they always have water. I usually bring, if it's a little bit more than a day, I'll bring some minerals out for them, in case they're not getting what they need from the plants that they're eating. I'll look at the vegetation from within the area. I'll look at nutrition. You know, the nutritional value, is it green? Is it dead? And go from there, and hopefully, you know, they get what they need from that area.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And so, what's the preparation for the goats? Do they eat in the morning when you come out? How does it kind of work to make sure that they're as efficient as possible?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah. So, goats, if you, if you ever watch goats, when you unload them from a trailer where you put them into an area with a lot of vegetation, they act starved, right? So, I never starve my goats. They have 24/7 access to hay and pasture at my place. And then, if they're not at my place, eating somewhere else with vegetation. But it's kind of part of their nature, their natural browsers. So, they, you know, try to find the best plants and eat those ones first. They try to, you'll see them kind of, they'll start on one end, work their way to the other, see what, see what candy is out there for, per se. And they'll choose the candy first. And then they'll start working on the other stuff that maybe tasted a little bit bitter, or bitter, or whatever. So yeah, and then in a typical day for them, they typically spend the morning browsing pretty heavily. They'll be pretty, I say, aggressive with the grazing, then they'll slow down, you know, kind of towards the middle of the day. They'll take a break. Goats are ruminants, so they have a different type of stomach than we do. So they have to sit down once they get full, and they have to chew their cud. You'll see them kind of chewing their cud like a cow. And they have to break down some of those, some of those plants that they're eating, and then they can get the nutrients from there.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, and then, obviously, there are some plants that goats certainly can eat, but there are some that they can give a general, sort of a description of what are good plants for goats and what aren't?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah, so I, you know, I had mentioned, mentioned before, everything in moderation, right? So, there are a lot of plants out there that are poisonous to livestock. You know, some of the things that we kind of really watch out for are rhododendrons, cherry trees. The cherry trees aren't as bad when they are, you know, green and on the tree, the wilted leaves are the kind of the ones that release some of the toxins that can cause them some issues. You know, great, good grass form. They go nuts for blackberries. They, you know, they go, go do great for thistle. And they'll, they'll, they'll munch down a pasture pretty well with a bunch of different types of grasses within that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What are the challenges of managing a herd like we have here, 75 to 100 goats?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah. So just, just, I would say, the moving. So, when we're moving this many goats at a time, it's not just throwing them on a leash and taking them one by one to the backyard, or whatever it's, as you saw today, it's, it's kind of a hurting style. We play zone defense, you typically, and so, yeah, that's, that would be the, that would be a pretty good challenge. It's, it's, it's the, it's been a learning experience for me, typically, you know, I tell people, if they're looking to get into goats, it's like, hey, you know, once you get the you get past that, like 1010, head mark, you start really having to look at the whole herd as a bait, as one. You can't necessarily start looking at every individual goat, like a lot of the you know, the homesteads will and stuff like that. But you know, as you start getting up to 100 200 300 400 you just have to. Herd management stuff, and kind of just kind of keep an eye on, you know, as in general.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What makes a good goat? What are some of the characteristics that you're looking for as you build your herd?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah? So, a good goat, you know, we talked about, you know, like the average person looks at a goat and they go, Oh, that one's really pretty well. That one may, may not, have ever had a kid before, but for me, for my purpose. My purpose is, or these goats, their purpose is to eat as much vegetation as they possibly can. So, there's some goats that are bottle babies, and at a young age, they don't necessarily learn their instincts from their mom on browsing. So, when you get a herd like this that has kind of grown-up browsing, have, have worked for a living. Basically, what we say we 'll, they'll, they'll do great with the vegetation. You know, we look at that, those qualities, you know, you can put a grain fed goat out into a pasture and they'll starve just because you just, they just don't know how to eat. They'll, they'll get thin. But, you know, as you as we look at the individual goats, we start looking for, can they carry, you know, multiple kids at once. So, goats are kind of cool. They can have twins. They can have singles. They can have twins. They can have triplets. They can even have quads or quinces. We haven't seen any of that. We've seen twins. So, a good goat for me is they can carry twins through the wintertime with the same feed that everybody else is getting, and still hold a good body condition, and then give me great, strong kids, healthy weights, healthy stuff like that, when they are born. And then be able to feed that goat, the both of those goats, or however many babies that they have, feed them up to, you know, weaning age, and then be able to, and then be able to put body weight back on after those kids.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Are there leaders?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah. So typically, if you, if you watch some, some of the herd, I have a couple, these are kind of a couple mixed herds that were brought in, so they're still kind of doing. They have their pecking order that they get. But there are some older, some of the older ones, you know, you'll see they'll go over to a plant, and they'll actually bend a plant down for others, and they'll kind of help guide them and like, hey, let's chew on this. Let's chew on that. So, yeah, there's definitely leaders, and then there's also some followers and stuff. There's definitely a pecking order.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, if someone is interested in this, talk about the advantages of what you're doing with goats versus, you know, hiring a human crew to do this, or pesticides, or that sort of a thing,
STEVE WEAVER: So first off, I have 100 employees, so I have 400 legs, yeah, right. So, I got 100 miles, so I can get through an area a little bit quicker than doing it by hand, especially if you're limited on people, you know, the goats, as we see, as we can see today. This is a pretty steep embankment that we're on right now, and the goats do fantastic on that unsure footing and stuff like that. So when you get, you know, the risks of, you know, running somebody with a, you know, a small hedge trimmer or weed whacker on some of these hillsides, there's, you know, moving parts on the hand tools and stuff like that. The risk is there for injury for them. So that's one of the advantages, of they can navigate some of the, some of the steeper stuff. Another advantage is, while they're eating, they're also producing fertilizer, you know, they're naturally, right? So, they put the fertilizer back on. So hopefully, some of that vegetation that we're taking away is allowing some sunlight and stuff like that, for other good vegetation to come up, to allow some of the natural stuff to come up, instead of the invasive species. Another advantage is goats actually don't pass seeds through their rumen and through their digestive system. So many, I didn't know that, yeah, so any weeds that they eat, most of those seeds do not get put back into the ground. So you're basically removing those seed heads and removing them off the property, and then they're basically minute. So it kind of reduces the spread of, like your Canadian thistle, you know, some of that other stuff that you know typically would take over as the more it gets, the more, the faster it starts to take over.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, is there seasonality to your work? Can they work in all fours, Oregon seasons?
STEVE WEAVER: So, Oregon is pretty tough to kind of manage during the wintertime right now. We usually, typically, we're starting around, oh, let's see, March, April, May-ish, depending on the weather. And then typically, we're starting to slow down with this, you know, custom grazing stuff in about, you know, late, late September, early October, we can usually push into October a little bit. Basically, it just depends on the property. If they can find cover, goats don't do super well with rain and cold. They do well with cold in general. They don't get cold super, super easily, but as soon as they get wet, they don't have the natural oils like sheep do. So. They typically, that's why, that's why you see, when it starts raining, you'll see goats take off for cover. That's just their natural instincts to kind of protect their body from it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, Stephen, my last question for you is for people listening, what are some criteria they should think about that maybe they want to do this? Is there a particular size? Is there a kind of an environment, whether it's residential or commercial, or commercial that it makes sense to call someone like you?
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah. So obviously, like we said before you know, if you have a steeper backyard, it's a little bit easier to run them in. Definitely, access is probably one of the big, big issues we run across access and then fencing around for some of the backyard stuff that we do, I typically require people to have a pretty good fence around it, because when, when you get some of the small stuff, it gets hard, and it gets hard to run some of that fencing in between houses and stuff, you know, so that that's a good, you know, if you have that stuff like a good fence, good access to the back your property, you don't have a whole lot of the poisonous plants that we kind of, we consider poisonous to the goats, like the cherries and the rhododendrons and stuff like that. It's more of your natural vegetation. That's where the goats can really come in handy. Yeah. And if, if you know, we go up anywhere from, I think you know, we're doing a pretty, fairly small backyard today, but we, this year, we finished a 7.4-acre job, and we're pushing 20 acres that we've done so far this year. So, the size is kind of I can I can make any size do.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Steven, thanks so much.
STEVE WEAVER: Yeah, no problem.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org if you'd like to see the video we took of the goats, go to our Oregon On the Record webpost at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, you'll hear from criminologists at Portland State University who are out with a new study which shows how Oregon's landmark measure, 110 to decriminalize drug possession was not the failure that law enforcement and lawmakers made it out to be. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening
