Joint venture | Goats help cattle producers manage weeds; cattle producers provide grazing for goat sector expansion
HUMBOLDT, Sask. — When goat producer Brian Payne moved his animals onto the Wolverine community pasture this summer, he came with them and stayed.
Payne, manager and partner in Caprina Farm & Ranch, has been camping out on the pasture west of Lanigan, Sask., since July 19, watching over a herd of 700 goats of different breeds, observing their behaviour and habits and learning how they coexist with their larger neighbours.
For a month, the goats also shared a patch of the lakeside pasture with 325 cow-calf pairs, which mowed down grass while the goats tackled more undesirable pasture plants such as snowberry and silverwillow, clearing a wide section of land.
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“I don’t know anything about goats or grazing them,” said pasture manager Eric Weisbeck.
“So when Brian phoned me and said that goats only eat brush, I was all in favour of that. And then when he said I didn’t have to do a whole bunch of fencing, I was even more in favour of that.”
The demonstration project is funded through the Agricultural Demonstration of Practices and Technologies program and hopes to show the benefits of multi-species grazing in the prairie environment.
The idea is simple: the goats help cattle producers manage their weed populations, fighting back against brush encroachment, reducing spraying and mowing costs and increasing stocking rates.
In return, goat producers receive feed for their animals and access valuable land needed to add scale and volume as they look to serve growing markets in ethnic communities.
Officials hope this demonstration, when combined with the results of a multi-species grazing project at a pasture near Elbow, Sask., will build and promote the practice.
“It’s such a win-win when you can get these benefits to one industry and help bring another industry into existence,” said Payne.
“Without the landowner, without the cattle people, we wouldn’t ever be able to really grow this goat industry.”
Other than one dead doe, Payne’s herd hasn’t faced serious pressure from predators while in pasture, although Payne won’t know an official tally until the goats are counted at the end of the season.
Weisbeck said there was little interaction between the animals, and neither he nor the 45 producers whose 1,300 cattle graze 17,000 acres at Wolverine had any concerns about the goats or the guardian dogs who work with them.
“It’s just a novelty thing for them,” said Weisbeck. “They didn’t have any concerns with their cattle and competition and that sort of a thing.”
An Peischel, a small ruminant specialist at Tennessee State University, told a multi-species grazing conference near Humboldt that cattle largely feed on grass, and goats eat mostly browse plants and to a lesser extent broadleaf weeds, which keeps competition to a minimum.
However, the goats must still be managed.
The large acres at Wolverine forced the pasture to use only the existing perimeter fencing and a short stretch of electrical fence for training, which will assist the end-of-season roundup.
The only other infrastructure is a trough for water and mineral requirements.
Payne’s plan is for 60 days of grazing at Wolverine, but another situation may call for something different. Depending on the space and the size of the herd, a producer could be there for as little as a few days or even hours, said Peischel.
Payne said the herd returns nightly to the base camp where it was first dropped off, but every day the animals are grazing a wider area. In the first week of September, it was more than 20 kilometres.
“It is intensive management. You don’t just put goats on land and leave them. It’s a whole different way of looking at the business,” said Peischel.
“Cattle you can put out there, you check them every other day or so, but goats you have to be there every day.”
A cattle-goat partnership must balance the needs of both species, Peischel said.
“If you’re doing any type of contracting, when you start writing your contracts, if (resting vegetation and animal performance) aren’t agreeable by the people you’re writing your contract with, don’t do business, because it’s an economic loss,” she said.
Officials working on the demonstration hope to keep the project going into a second year, moving the goats to a different spot on the pasture. Another possibility is to try rotating the goats through different pastures.
“It’s no different than anything else. It’s a joint venture. You provide the land. I provide the goats and the goat expertise,” said Payne. “This is how we work together.”
