Grass got your goat? Goats can get your grass!
Staff writer
Forget lawnmowers. Marion City Council is looking at ways for goats to clean out areas of hard-to-reach overgrowth.
In what is called targeted grazing, bovidae brush beaters are fenced in areas to eat overgrowth. It’s a method that has gained traction across the state in recent years, and even in countries like Australia and New Zealand.
The only thing stopping Marion is Marion itself.
“By our current codes, there’s no allowance for that kind of activity,” administrator Brian Wells said.
According to city code 2, the necessities for targeted grazing are prohibited within city limits.
Section 2-109 states it is illegal to keep horses, mules, cattle, sheep, goats, swine, or other undomesticated animals in the city.
Section 2-113(e) prohibits barbed wire and electrically charged fences without an agricultural permit.
Wells hopes the city will make an exception for targeted grazing, likening it to allowing people to keep chickens and ducks as well as travel on Main St. with horses during parades.
In addition to clearing areas with dense vegetation, targeted grazing can control populations of noxious weeds that impact native plant species.
Four species of noxious weeds are commonly found throughout the county: musk thistle, field bindweed, sericea lespedeza, and Johnson grass.
These weeds will choke out native grass, county noxious weed director, Joshua Housman said.
“Especially the Johnson grass,” Housman said. “It’ll kill anything that it starts getting around.”
Targeted grazing provides a chemical-free alternative to controlling these weeds and is viable in most cases, Housman said.
“I know once Johnson grass gets up and it gets mature, I don’t know of any grazing animal that would eat it,” Housman said. “Sericea lespedeza, cows and goats and sheep will eat as long as it’s young. But once it gets to a stage, and it’s hitting that stage right now, that plant turns woody, and the goats won’t eat it, cows won’t eat it, and sheep won’t eat it.”
At least three Kansas-based companies specialize in targeted grazing: Goats on the Go, HireGoats Corral, and Barnyard Weed Warriors and Network.