Invasive plants and weeds have long been a problem at Cass County’s T.K. Lawless Park, especially where they’ve overgrown areas around the park’s disc golf course.
The problem has worsened since a tornado whipped through years ago, downing many trees. The trees and debris are still down, making it difficult to get equipment in to clear the thick vegetation.
This spring Cass County Parks Director Scott Wyman decided to try a new strategy.
Wyman had the county hire Goats on the Go, a new business launched by Willowbrook Farms in rural Cass County. Owners Juan and Vanessa Frias brought in 30 of their hungry goats, who spent 10 days munching on leaves and weeds in the park’s more dense areas.
Fun for goat lover
To Wyman’s delight, the goats took most of the unwanted plant life down to the ground.
“They just did a heck of a job,” Wyman said. “I took my board out there yesterday and my board was just incredibly impressed on the thoroughness of these goats. It’s very difficult to do it by hand. It’s not very efficient to do it by hand, so these goats were certainly a blessing for us to get them out there.”
Last week, the Frias had another happy customer in Carl Hubbell. Twenty-four of their goats spent about a week in Hubbell’s back yard in Goshen, eating some unwanted vegetation that Hubbell hasn’t gotten around to clearing.
Hubbell says his yard got away from him over the past 20 years as he was working out of town a lot.
“Big benefit was we got to see the goats for the week,” Hubbell said. “There’s just something about goats. I go to the county fair to see the goats and everything else. But it was really fun to have them out here and I think we did some good. The amount of poison ivy and the amount of vines we had, it was just, let’s let Mother Nature come in and do what it’s supposed to do.”
Owners busy but want to grow
So far this is sort of a side business for Juan and Vanessa. They also own a barber shop and a day care center, and their Willowbrook Farm also harvests meat for sale at farmers markets.
They’ve become one of 60 affiliates of Goats on the Go, which was founded in Ames, Iowa in 2012 and began enlisting affiliates in 2016, says company founder Aaron Steele. So far the affiliates are mostly around the Midwest.
So how do you keep the goats from eating plants you want to keep? Hubbell wanted to keep some of his plants, including a rhododendron and some lilac bushes. Goats on the Go cordons those off with a portable solar-powered electric fence, the same fencing used around the area’s perimeter to keep the goats on site during a project.
Steele and Vanessa Frias say having goats graze on unwanted vegetation is more environmentally friendly than only using power equipment and chemical herbicides.
Steele says he sees demand continuing to grow.
“There’s vegetation challenges all over the country,” Steele said. “They differ from place to place. Out west it’s fire mitigation, removing some vegetation that would be fuel in a wildfire. In other parts of the country it’s mostly about nuisances and controlling invasive plants. But there’s no part of the United States that doesn’t have vegetation challenges for property owners."
The Frias started collecting their herd in March 2022 and now have about 40 goats. Two sets of twins were born at Lawless park.
As part of the orientation packet for new customers, Goats on the Go advises making sure you don’t live in an area where goats aren’t allowed to graze. One of Hubbell’s neighbors complained, and the city of Goshen told him he’d need to remove the goats because grazing livestock isn’t allowed in residentially zoned areas.
A Goshen city official later told WVPE that the goats might have been allowed to stay longer if the city had realized that they were only there temporarily. Had the animals been allowed to stay longer, Frias said she would have brought some sheep to chew the grass down lower to the ground.
“Because it’s just temporary we were hoping that people would say OK it’s just temporary, it’s just a grazing project just like cutting grass, and then they’re gone,” Vanessa Frias said. “Overall our goats did the best they could and they cleaned up some of the brush. Now he can see through some of the areas in which he was trying to get to, but our sheep would have done an awesome job with the combination of the two."
Help from headquarters
Steele, the Iowa-based founder, says many cities still need to learn about the service, and its environmental benefits. Once they do, he thinks they’ll adjust their ordinances accordingly.
Until then, it will be one more challenge that he’ll help local affiliates manage. Frias said his help has been critical to getting the business started.
“There’s a lot about goats that I didn’t know,” she said. “When you come into situations where they get sick, or you need to know, like, for example, they’re not eating a certain species. Why aren’t they eating a certain species? Do I need to do something? They’re not eating fast enough. The other day I called him and said hey they’re not eating what I thought they would eat. Throw a protein block in there and see if that will get them to start eating.
“Honestly just a bucket of information that we get from them. Instead of me trying to go out here and figure it out. They even train you as far as how to put the fencing up, and how to make sure that it’s maintained. We have a Facebook group and on that Facebook group we can ask questions, like how do you give quotes. Just basics.”
Frias says she might start focusing on growing her sheep herd as well. As solar energy becomes more common, a local solar energy firm tells her there will be a need for targeted grazing where grass grows up around solar panels. She says goats can’t do it because they’d simply jump up on the panels and ruin them.
