Congressional Goats – “Green” Mowers | National Geographic

it’s a little unusual week in the
cemetery we welcomed almost 60 goats to
a perimeter area and they’re going to be
grazing for six days eliminating our
invasive species
lots of kudzu poison ivy even English
ivy that tends to kill our large and
mature trees down there
in leaves and stems a typical goats
eating somewhere between 10 and 15
pounds of green material day they’re
very sustainable livestock they’re
they’re fun to watch they’re they’re
low-impact and I think we’re
rediscovering some real old technology
that needs to be brought back sites like
this where we have rocks piles of dirt
deep ditches lots of down logs the goats
you know do a really good job just
clamoring over whatever they need to and
standing on them to get to get up higher
so they’re they’re a great way
especially on highly erodible soils
they’re very low impact a big goat
weighs 150 pounds they’re very agile and
they don’t tear up the ground it’s
actually incredible the amount of
progress they’ve made in one day when we
walk back here yesterday you could
barely see anything around you post or
something like herbicides or pesticides
things like that we’re right near the
Anacostia River we’re quite close to
that and so this is a way to control it
without using chemicals and we were
especially aware of that because we’re
in Anacostia watershed it’s actually
much cheaper to hire the goats we would
have to hire humans and as well as
purchase you know pesticides herbicides
and then we’re left with the debris that
we clear out but the goats costs about
four thousand dollars for the week and
if you break it down it’s about 25 cents
per goat per hour