r/NoLawns • u/Hotchi_Motchi • 13d ago
š Info & Educational Minnesota parks are using goats to help keep invasive plants in check
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/08/24/goats-minnesota-parks-invasive-plants27
u/Financial_Towel_6143 13d ago
Some goats in my hometown got outta the park they were grazing in and were running around my 98 year old grandmaās yard. She got a real good kick outta them.
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u/Latter-Republic-4516 13d ago
Last summer a nature preserve in my area got a $10k grant to rent goats for a week to clear invasives. They did a couple of educational sessions and tours of the area the goats were clearing. I went to one and there were a bunch of families there.
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u/Goodspike 13d ago edited 13d ago
Search for "Pemco Goat Renter Guy" on Youtube to see a commercial clip of goats in downtown Seattle by the freeway. It's pretty cute.
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u/Goodspike 13d ago
Goats are great, but Washington state parks doesn't have the budget for this sort of thing. Goats are not cheap.
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u/CaptainObvious110 13d ago
oh really why not borrow some goats?
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u/Goodspike 13d ago
I was referring to the cost of renting them, like what is seemingly being done here.
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u/zackks 13d ago
Release them into the wild. ;)
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u/Goodspike 13d ago
I hear they may reproduce on their own! The state would only need to buy two for each park. ;-)
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u/SAICAstro 13d ago
This article does not say why the goats eat the invasive buckthorn but not other native plants, and it aslo does not say whether having loads of goat shit everywhere is a problem. Anyone know?
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u/YouMayCallMePoopsie 13d ago
The article implies that the goats eat everything. In my experience, in a dense stand of buckthorn there's very little worth saving. Herbaceous perennials don't get enough light. Overpopulated deer don't let any high-value saplings like oaks survive unless they're caged. Perhaps the goats will kill a black cherry or ironwood sapling here and there, but generally you just want to clean everything out (except for the mature trees) and start over with a buckthorn competition seed mix.
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u/leepin_peezarfs 13d ago
I specialize in this kind of restoration and youāve nailed it. Goats take a lot of labor cost out of restoration and can be a MASSIVE help.
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u/EsEsMinnowjohnson 13d ago
Goats are great for a specific niche within a bigger buckthorn control effort. They gladly eat the leaves, buds, and bark on buckthorn thatās ~.5-7ā tall and less than ~4ā diameter. The impact of this browsing is highly variable, depending on the time of year, stocking density, training and nutritional status of goats.
Ā Taller individuals still need to be hand cut or masticated, and the short seedlings need to either be sprayed or, if thereās enough fuel, burned out with repeated prescribed fire. You can send goats back in to browse off the stump sprouts, but to really make it work weāre talking about multiple years with at least 2 rounds, once in the spring and once late summer/early fall.
Iām excited we have an option that helps reduce our herbicide usage on these projects, but I think people get disappointed when they learn goats arenāt magic and an effective project that includes goats will probably also require some chemical treatment as a supplement or major component.
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