Roanoke has contracted some new landscapers to take care of invasive plant species on steep land at Valley Avenue Park. These landscapers, while bleating loudly and eating on the job, are more efficient and environmentally friendly than machinery and pesticides, and easier on the city’s wallet.
Goats and sheep continuously eat away at the brush on the steep hill, day and night. The goats climb over each other to reach higher pieces of brush to eat. It’s a diverse herd — there’s a dark goat with big brown eyes, a blonde goat with a mane, an elder goat with a goatee, white and brown sheep with thick coats, and a jealous goat who uses his horns to get to the food the quickest. Their names include Bingles, General and Amber.
The city’s pilot “goatscaping” project consists of over 20 goats and sheep who are eating their way through the brush at the city park in the Wasena neighborhood. It will take the animals about two weeks total to get through about two acres of brush. They graze all day, and sometimes at night if it is rainy during the day.
Laura Reilly, parks manager with Roanoke Parks and Recreation, said these species include kudzu, poison ivy and Ailanthus, or tree of heaven. These rapidly growing plants are climbing retaining walls and creating a dense brush in the park, Reilly said. Kudzu is known as “the vine that ate the South,” according to the Nature Conservancy, for its prevalence in the southeastern United States.
And while it’s hard for humans to navigate these plants safely, “goats are not selective,” Reilly said. “They eat whatever they can get to.”
Sheep are commonly referred to as “grazers,” because they prefer eating grasses, whereas goats are known as “browsers,” meaning they will eat plants higher off the ground, like twigs and leaves off of trees, and shrubbery.
Replacing machinery and manpower with the animals allows Roanoke to reduce its use of pesticides, protect city employees who would be working with these plants and save money. The whole project is estimated to cost the city about $2,000 to $2,500 — which is far cheaper than sending a crew of workers and machinery out to do this work, Reilly said.
“We want to be really good stewards of the environment,” Reilly said, and this was an “opportunity to think outside the box.”
The city is conducting the pilot project through Blue Ridge Goatscaping, the first goat rental business in the New River Valley.
Owner Ezekiel Reed started the business in January 2020. He’s worked on farms his whole life, he said, and a fellow farmer sparked the idea of goat rentals while Reed visited his farm in North Carolina.
His herd started with five goats and has since multiplied in size to a varied herd of about 28 goats and 12 sheep.
While many other kinds of businesses struggled during the pandemic, this wasn’t the case for Reed. “It turns out a lot of people were stuck at home with nothing better to do than watch a bunch of goats eat that brush that’s been accumulating over the years,” he said.
Goatscaping goes back about two decades, Reed said, and started on the West Coast to help prevent wildfires in California. The idea, Reed said, is that the goats eat down the dry material, which makes for “the perfect fire tinder.”
Goat Busters, in Afton, was the first of these companies to open in Virginia. Jace Goodling started the company in 2008 and has grown his herd to about 100 goats. He said demand has been high for some time, but word has gotten out about goatscaping, partially due to the entertainment factor of watching the goats at work and the rise of social media.
“It’s a popular idea and when people hear about it, they’re apt to follow up,” Goodling said. He has contracted with Charlottesville and Albemarle County and has also done work for a number of homeowner associations, he said.
Now, there are at least six companies that will bring goats out to land in Virginia. A quick Google search on HireGoats.com allows for a search of goat-rental companies in your area.
Goats make “great landscapers,” Reed said, because they can access steep hillsides and rocky areas that are harder for humans to safely work on.
“They just happened to be the species that were smart enough to get on steep areas to get away from predators,” he said. “Over time, they just got better and better at it, and they’re able to manage steep areas pretty well.”
Reilly said in the past, Roanoke sent city landscapers with machinery to handle the brush growth in the park. But it was “terrible” for the staff because of the conditions, and the plants grow back rapidly, she said. Organizations, schools and other local groups often volunteer to help with invasive species removal in the parks.
“I just couldn’t put volunteers in here,” Reilly said. “It’s a dangerous, very, very steep slope.”
Goats are also more delicate and easier to control on a landscape, causing less erosion and damage to the existing flora and fauna than machinery, she said.
Invasive plant species are hard to control because they grow so rapidly. They adapt to new habitats easily, face a small number of natural predators and reproduce quickly.
Tree of heaven, which hosts spotted lanternflies, can produce over 300,000 seeds per year, according to the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia.
When goats eat these seeds, their digestive systems render the seeds unviable for regrowth when they’re introduced back into the earth, Reed said. This helps to reduce the seed bank of the invasive species.
Goats don’t tend to feel full and stop eating, Reed said. He said humans take a break in the day to eat lunch, whereas goats might take a break in the day to stop eating.
Reed said that while goats will eat anything, mountain laurel and azalea plants can be harmful for them. This is why Reed visits a site to assess the plants that are there before letting the goats have at it.
Reilly said if the pilot project goes smoothly, the city will consider bringing the goats back to the park every six to eight months and will look into other areas of the city, too.
A woman driving on Valley Avenue at the bottom of the slope Monday evening slowed to a stop, rolling her car window down — “I wanted to see the goats!” she yelled up to Reed.
