Using goats to clear blackberry?

Depends on the type of goat- a dairy goats can get her udder all torn up. As far as blackberry plants, mine will eat them in the spring.
They like the tender shoots. Won't touch the mature canes. We have lots of mulit-flora roses, black berries, raspberries and all kinds of
briar/bramble plants. The wethers, yearlings and a couple boer x's do pretty good on keeping the new growth down. Oh, and add poison ivy,
they love that! But, if you let a dairy doe eat it, there is a good chance you will get poison ivy all over your arms and hands when you milk her!

One quick note, none of the goats stand and eat the plants, they eat a bite here and there- so if something is bad for them, they never eat
enough at one time to hurt them.

 

This is part of the reason i am getting goats. I had a friend years ago that used his goats to clear land that was covered with multiflora bushes. They did an amazing job.

 

Mine cleared all mine out....but I didn't want them too lol. I also got goats just to clear brush and a stupid weed called fiddle neck and they do a great job if you just let them do their thing and not spoil them with grain and hay. I do agree about the dairy girls. My lamancha has to stay back when she is in milk and it breaks her heart bit if I let her go she ends up with really bad cuts on her bag and teats.

 

Goats will eliminate black berries and then you will wish they hadn't killed them all. It takes awhile. It's true they don't eat the big canes, but the bush can't live if their leaves get eaten off all the time. I had an acre of black berry jungle three years ago. Now it looks like a city park.

 

I seriously doubt that an adult fox can take down a healthy, adult goat. They can take down the kids, though.

 

Well, I have dairy goats, and there were several locations that were blackberry infested, let's just say they are no more. My sheep actually do eat the tougher stuff, but I think that is unusual.... They will have a few more patches this spring to eat up;-)

 

Nothing is better for clearing blackberries than goats IMO. Blackberry leaves are very good for the goats too!
Large areas of our property were overgrown with blackberries. Wherever the goats had access, they cleared them out and now it's pasture. No need to cut the canes till after they're dead. The goats will pull them down to eat them.

 

Well, Pygmies are sure no good at poison ivy clearing...I got pygmies for 2 reasons, I've been in love with them since I was 12yo & saw 1 at a fair petting zoo & wanted them mostly as pets. The OTHER reason, was b/c I'm crazy allergic to poison ivy & heard goats love it...HA! Yeah...I ended up w/3, not a ONE will even nibble. They don't want anything to do w/blackberry bushes either. They prefer leaves...green, dead, doesn't seem to matter unless they're attached to a blackberry or poison ivy plant, of course. They also like fruits but are so far extremely fussy w/veggies...I'll be posting a new thread about that. I have heard, however, that the larger breeds of goats (particularly Alpines & Boers) do amazing bushwork...

 

Yep, Pygmy's don't quite cut it. Now cross a Pygmy with a Nubian (kinder) now you have yourself a brush clearing goat;-)

 

Well, we are using cattle panels. But since I am getting weanling, s this is why. We have cows, so property fence line is barbed. The area were the kids will be is right where we want to cut down trees. It's a real mess with poison ivy growing up them. I figured it was the best place to put growing kids.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Goat Forum mobile app