Invasive weeds got your goat?
That was the case with Denver Parks and Recreation groundskeeping staff, daunted by the seemingly never-ending task of weed abatement. Rather than attacking the vexing vegetation with intensive labor, noisy mowers or chemical herbicides, city naturalist Gayle Weinstein outsourced a portion of the job to a herd of grazing goats.
Now munching their way along Bible Park in southeast Denver, the herd of 150 goats devours half an acre of weeds per day.
“If it’s growing or once grew, they’ll eat it. Anything organic,” said Weinstein.”
They do have preferences, however. Goats will eat needles and threads, the common name for the wispy native grass, last. Since the city wants to support the plant, the goats are moved to another spot before they snack on the grass.
In 1999, Denver’s Department of Parks and Recreation initiated the Natural Areas Program to restore and protect native plants and wildlife. That’s when the goats first burst on the city parks scene.
“We were the first to have this sort of program in an urban area,” Weinstein said.
This summer marks the goats’ first season at Bible Park. They’ve also worked along the Platte River and Cherry Creek. They put in more concentrated efforts at Babi Yar Park – near South Havana Street and East Yale Avenue – where the goats were a major factor in the restoration of the sand prairie that now boasts 70 species of native wildflowers and grasses.
Marsha Havengar is the third goatherd the city has hired. She prefers the title “keeper of the goats.”
“Boots is the goatherd,” Havengar said, nodding to her 6-year-old Australian shepherd, who kept an earnest eye on the herd.
Grazing goats are gaining ground. Boulder County and Fort Collins have employed goats. The goats also work in Colorado’s high country.
“The Vail Valley has goats now. They eat what’s known as the one-hour fuels – the undergrowth that gets wildfires going,” said Havengar, also a retired firefighter. Goats now are being used in the same way in Los Angeles County’s fire-mitigation efforts.
Havengar’s mixed herd includes La Mancha, Toggenburg, Sannen, Newbian, Spanish, Boer and pygmy goats. They range from solid colors to spotted with black and white or roan and white hair – some shaggy enough to qualify as cashmere-class goats. With their cloven hooves, floppy ears and pale golden eyes with thin, rectangular pupils, the goats cut a curious figure.
Contrary to fairy tales, male goats are termed bucks while females are does – not billys or nannys. Some sport beards, lending a comical, wizened look. Some have horns of varying length. Neither horns nor beards indicate gender.
“Most goat breeds have horns,” Havengar said. “Some of these were dehorned. All of the male goats are withers, the equivalent of taking a stallion to a gelding.”
In other words, they’ve been castrated.
Like cows, goats have rudiment stomachs with four chambers that efficiently digest vegetation, making reintroduction of seeds into the ground less likely. Havengar relocates the goats daily, corralling them a bit farther down the stretch of land adjacent to Goldsmith Gulch.
“They can denude an area,” Weinstein said. “We want to move them before they do too much damage or an odor builds up.”
Havengar, with the help of one of her ranch hands, disassembles and reassembles the metal fence panels in about 40 minutes, and the goats start in on fresh territory. Some kneel, poke their heads through the fence, crane their necks to reach a clump of curly doc beyond the pen, proving that it’s not only humans who get the notion that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
Havengar rises each day between 3:30 and 4 a.m. and spends between seven and eight hours at the park with her herd. She settles into a portable chair in the shade. Though it’s only her second year keeping the herd, she knows her goats; and her goats know her.
About a third of the herd is named. There’s Jackson and Newman, Pepper and Vanilla, Mariposa and Kermit, Selene and Sweetpea, who every day resists leaving and has to be lifted by Havengar into the trailer. One sizable male, Solomon, wears a collar with a bell.
“They’re very social. There is a hierarchy. It’s sort of like a playground, where the big guy is in charge,” said Havengar.
On a recent afternoon, in the distance, over the sound of munching and the distant stream of traffic intersecting South Monaco Boulevard Parkway and East Yale Avenue, thunder rolled. As an afternoon shower commenced, the goats made a beeline for the trailer, loading up urgently but orderly like commuters boarding a train.
“Goats don’t like rain,” said Havengar.
Which proves perfect because Boots doesn’t like thunder.
Once the rain ceased, the goats bailed out of the trailer and frolicked back into the pen. Boots relaxed her face into a canine grin, watching a frisky pair rear, butt heads, lock horns briefly.
“They stay at it about 30 seconds, and then seem to say, ‘OK, let’s go eat,”‘ said Havengar. “The threats are dogs, coyotes and foxes, but people are the biggest threat. We don’t want them to end up on somebody’s backyard barbecue.”
Consequently, the goats go home each afternoon. Boots rounds them up and into a red trailer and Havengar makes the 90-minute commute to the ranch she and her husband own in the Prospect Valley on Colorado’s Eastern Plains.
Meanwhile, urban areas critical for wildlife habitat are being restored with the help of the herd.
“The city has approximately 3,000 acres of open space that someday – hopefully – will be restored,” Weinstein. said. “There are no mowers with all their pollution. We’re not disturbing the soil. There’s no chemical, nothing to haul off to the landfills. These goats are grazing much the way bison once did.
“And people are learning.”
Havengar, a former teacher, agreed. “I have some people who come by every day. They’ve become the experts on the goats. Others ask questions, and these people answer them.”
The working goats seem content, too. Clambering up on the fence, trying to reach the juniper trees protected by the pen, they appear oblivious to passing dogs, joggers or bicyclists.
“They’ve gotten used to motorcycles and helicopters” and boom boxes, Havengar said.
The keeper of the goats and her herd and her dog plan to continue to work around Bible Park through September.
All told, it’s a creative solution suitable for everyone – no ifs, ands or, er, butts.
