Hire Our Goats To Eat Your Weeds!

Liberation Farmers offers a restoration goats grazing service to landowners that want to control unwanted woody and invasive plants by eating them - buckthorn, honeysuckle, spotted knapweed, and much more. Goats are natural browsers of these types of plants, rather than true grazers. They prefer woody and even some toxic plants due to their high mineral content. Goats are a natural alternative to using poisonous herbicides and heavy equipment.

We set up portable electric fencing to keep the goats where they are needed and protect them. We typically leave a trailer on site for shelter from storms.

The goats graze in high density, known as “mob grazing”, where they will eat almost everything in the fenced in area. Then we move their fence as needed to other portions of the property. Depending on the goals of the landowner, some jobs can be done in one grazing, while others with more persistent weeds many need multiple visits over several years.

Most of our goat grazing jobs are focused on buckthorn in the understory of wooded areas. Goats love buckthorn and prefer it to almost any other trees and shrubs. They do a great job of eating all the fruits, leaves, buds, and strip off the bark. However, buckthorn is a stubborn perennial that typically takes multiple rounds of goat visits to get it under control. After that it can be managed manually or with follow up goat visits every few years.

We have experience in urban, suburban, and rural locations. Customers usually like to watch the goats while they work. Some even invite the neighbors and friends to set up lawn chairs! After hosting our goats Becky and Stephen Veldhoff of Whiting said, “We now see parts of our yard we didn’t know existed!” Another customer in Amherst used the goats to clean up the barnyard around their dairy farm and woodlot. The goats happily cleared honeysuckle and buckthorn from a perennial flower garden.

Our general rates are $`1,000 per acre but this depends a lot on the specific site, type of vegetation, ease or difficulty of set up, and how far away your site is from our farm. We will visit your site and help you come up with a restoration plan for your property including goats as well as other suggestions. Contact us for a site visit and estimate.