i live in Oregon's coast Range, which is a temperate rainforest. my land was cleared years ago before i bought it and i have a couple open meadows intersperesed with a few big maples, red alder and cedar. the problem is the HImalayan blackberries. they are a nonnative plant that takes over very quickly, leaving the land covered in snarls of vicious brambles. i do not have a tractor or any kind of power equipment and hacking all down manually is futile and discouraging. plus it all grows right back. someone suggested i get 'brush goats". will goats really eat this stuff? how do you contain them? my land is not fenced. i have national forest on one side and paper company land on the other and a salmon river in my front yard. chemicals are NOT an option. have an affinity with animals but have never had "livestock" before. most of my homestead skills are in tinkering, building, mechanics and such, not critters or kitchen things. some farm wife eh? :)

-- Juno redleaf (gofish@presys.com), October 22, 2000

Answers

They will eat it with great relish! It sounds like you might be able to let them roam a little during the day, if you don't have any plants that you don't want them to eat, or you could fence the garden in. if you feed them a little grain in their shed/barn every night, they will return for that. It would probably be best to get wethers or does that are either not milking, or that don't have great big productive udders, because the thorns could damage a large udder. If you want to fence them in, electric fence is the thing to use. We have the New Zealand kind and it works very well with only two strands.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), October 22, 2000.

Yes, goats will HELP clear brambles, but, remember they will only eating the green, growing stems and leaves, NOT the hard established canes, even this years canes are too tough once mature. We live in southern Ohio where multiflora rose was introduced years ago for erosion control, too much of a good thing for sure !!! Like your blackberry, this stuff crowds out everything, even climbing trees and killing them. The only nonchemical way to control it, you will never kill it, even if you bulldoze it, you'll miss some roots and back it comes, is to brush hog it at least once a year, twice is best. That way the grasses have a chance to establish themselves and help crowd out the brambles, we have renovated several pastures that way that were just masses of brambles before. We use a 6 foot brush hog and a 40 HP tractor, works on brambles taller than the tractor. A certain amount of fearlessness is required as the darn things try to tear you apart on the tractor, Carhart's (brown duck clothing) help protect your skin fairly good. Good luck !!! Annie in SE OH.

-- Annie Miller (annie@1st.net), October 23, 2000.

Goats will take on multiflora rose, poison ivy, and blackberries as well as other similar pest plants and eventually kill them. Mine eat a plant down to nubbins then go on to the next plant. When the nubbins sprout new shoots, the goats eat them. The next set of shoots don't come back as quickly because the root energy is reduced but the goats eat it just as fast. It gets smaller and more tender each time. They continue to eat all the new shoots until the root reserves are depleted and the plants die. I've seen my goats go after multiflora stems as thick as the base of my thumb, a good inch or so, and just bite gingerly around the thorns. You'd think it would tear their mouths to ribbons but it doesn't seem to.

I've related previously the story about another farm being sprayed without our consent years ago by our own neighbor from hell. When the chemical company (won't mention names but it rhymes with now)sent out a very young man to placate us (didn't work), the little jerk all but called me a liar. He commented that we had no multiflora roses in our pasture and that we must have sprayed it ourselves. I told him the goats had eaten all that had been in the pasture and all they could reach through the fence. He still didn't believe me, saying the goats he'd had as a kid wouldn't touch them. I cut the thickest, thorniest canes I could find, offered them to the bucks who cleaned them up in no time, thorns and all. Shut that little twerp up in no time.

You are left with woody "stumps" but they break down in a year or so until they can be easily be cut off or pulled.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), October 24, 2000.

Oh,yes goats will do a very nice job at clearing land. I looked at a picture of our land when we first moved here, and couldn't believe the difference. They will eat all the leaves and green shoots, till the plants are too weak to sprout back.Then if there are any woody parts left, they are easily cut. This place was covered in snakebush and goldenrod, plus a few bunches of wild raspberry. After the first year there was a great improvement. After the second year there was nothing but pasture with some dead little trees left in it. Do get some wethers or nonmilking does, that way you will save yourself the work of milking (unless you are interested in having milk) and their nutrition doesn't have to be as good as for a milking doe, wich means they can do good on scrub-land.

-- Karin Morey (wind_crest@hotmail.com), October 25, 2000.

I have the same problem with nettles and other weeds .I have also had a problem keeping them in a fence , so heres what I did .I took some old tires and chains and tied them to it .I thought I would move them as needed well they move themselfs where ever they want .At least it slows them down a bit .I also don't have any nettles .

-- Patty (fodfarms@slic.com), October 25, 2000.

I have thought that the tire and chain thing would work. How far do they travel with the tire? And what size goats? I am thinking of pygmys so thought they might be less strong in pulling the tire.

-- Anne (HT@HM.com), October 29, 2000.