Able to scramble up trees | Goats will clean out underbrush in bushy areas to make it suitable for sheep and cattle
THORSBY, Alta. — Just like the Friendly Giant, goat owners need to look up, waaay up, to see goat grazing potential.
Goats don’t just eat grass; they leap up on their hind feet, stretch their necks and browse the woody branches and leaves of trees and bushes.
“Think vertical. There’s a lot of feed up high,” said An Peischel, who doesn’t look at grass when assessing new pasture. Instead, she considers the browsing potential of the leaves and branches above her head.
“Goats are always looking at high plants,” said Peischel, a small ruminant specialist at Tennessee State University.
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It’s not uncommon for goats to reach up or scramble up trees two to 2 1/2 metres high and pull down the vegetation to eat.
Peishcel and her goats are often hired to go through a brushy area to clean out the underbrush and make it habitable for sheep and cattle. Light is allowed to filter through the branches and boost grass growth once the goats move through and clear out the brush.
Goats have also been used in areas with high fire danger. Cleaning out the low shrubs allows fire to skim across the tops of the trees and lowers the potential of fire damage on the ground, she said.
Lee Sexton of Hanley, Sask., said he no longer looks at the grass when scouting potential grazing for his goats. Instead, he looks for weedy areas and rough country, which he calls ideal goat grazing land.
“There is a huge potential for browsing and grazing of unwanted vegetation,” said Sexton, who is hired to graze his goats on problem weed areas across Saskatchewan. “I don’t look at grass anymore, I look around the grass at everything else.”
He was recently contacted by a southern Alberta rancher looking for goats to graze 5,100 acres of wooded area.
Sexton doesn’t have enough goats to graze that much brush, but it shows that traditional ranchers are looking at small ruminants such as sheep and goats to complement their cattle grazing operation to improve forage.
“The demand exceeds what we can produce. The market for grazing is there,” said Sexton.
Peischel said she tries to match the stage of the weeds or shrubs with their palatability for goats when assessing an area for goat grazing.
The goats graze buckeye in the fall, scotch broom before it flowers and yellow thistle when it is in seed. The seeds are rich in protein and energy.
“Know what goats will eat at what time of year,” she said.
Peischel was hired to graze her goats along an old river that had dried up and quit running because of the dense forage along the river. The goats chewed off the dense underbrush over a seven-year period, and the river once again started to run.
Margaret Berry of Evansburg, Alta., said she came to the conference wanting to know if she should have goats to eat the thistle in her cow pasture.
“It’s the first time I considered a goat market,” said Berry.
