Hiring goats to clear an overgrown backyard is the latest upper-middle-class fad:
Generally, companies truck goats to work sites (some gas required) where the animals munch inside portable fencing or electric netting, often powered by solar panels. Prices can range from $200 a day for a dozen goats to upward of $1,000 for larger herds of 100 or more. On bigger projects, animals may stay overnight supervised by the business owners or specially trained guardian dogs.
At Vanderbilt Mansion, where a small herd currently grazes on seven hilly acres, the job’s $9,000 annual price tag is about two-thirds what hired manpower would run, says Dave Hayes, the estate’s natural-resource program manager. “And the goats are a lot more popular.”
They’re also gentle. Casey Brewer of Duvall, Wash., hired The Goat Lady LLC to clear half an acre overrun with salmonberries. The tally came to just over $1,000 for three days, and Ms. Brewer says the goats didn’t harm her cherished old-growth cedar stumps.
“It’s a wonderful alternative to bulldozing the property,” she says.
There can be snafus. Josh Farmer, 49, runs The Goat Lady with his partner Jill Johnson, an eighth-grade schoolteacher. While electric netting and an Anatolian shepherd dog protect their goats from predators or household dogs, neighborhood children pose a unique threat. “There are those who think it’s fun to unplug my electric fence just when it gets dark, letting goats escape,” Mr. Farmer says.
And some plants are toxic to goats including ornamentals such as azaleas, oleanders and rhododendrons. Lois Anne Keith paid about $14,000 to bring in 130 goats from Rent-A-Ruminant LLC for several weeks of clearing around her 25-acre Woodinville, Wash., property. The experience went smoothly, except one evening when four goats got sick munching old rhododendron stumps because they were hidden by blackberries. Fortunately the owner, Tammy Dunakin, was sleeping on site in a truck and had medicine to give the goats.
“It’s not a simple line of work,” says Ms. Dunakin, who expects to gross just over $100,000 this year, her sixth in the business, and is developing an “affiliate” model to train others in goat brush-clearing. From setting up fencing to giving goats shots, water and mineral supplements, she says, “there are a lot of mistakes people can make.”
Town and city rules about livestock vary. Often animals can’t be raised on property not zoned for agriculture use — but are allowed to visit. In 2004, some residents of the Pacific Palisades, Calif., enclave Marquez Knolls complained, unsuccessfully, to city officials when a resident temporarily parked a trailer with her brush-clearing goats on the street. At night, coyotes circled the truck, recalls Haldis Toppel, president of the neighborhood association. “This is a residential area with dogs, cats and kids and there is a safety factor,” she says.