Goats for Weed Abatement...
My girlfriend, Denise, lives in Meadowview and informed us that there are goats in the meadow and we had to see them. Meadowview is one of Temecula's earliest housing developments with lots of open space. Interestingly, it uses goats as the preferred method of weed abatement, habitat restoration and soil improvement.
For me, I could have watched these guys all day. I felt I was on a farm in Middle America. What fun.
Goats have been used for centuries in different cultures as meat, for their milk and as four-legged brush clearing machines. Goats will eat almost any vegetation and have a capacity to digest even plants with stickers and thorns. Goats will even eat poison ivy and many other pest plants. Not to mention the fact that they are so dang adorable!
Oh man, and the babies! We missed this little guy being born by mere minutes. We did get to watch him stand for the first time and be groomed by his mom. Wow.
Such sweetness.
The kids were more puppy than goat. I could have observed them for hours. Absolutely precious.
What a field of feel good-ness. My heart was happy with all the mom love and otherworldliness being there afforded us. Thank you Denise for the wonderful suggestion. It was just what we needed.
3 comments:
precious moment, seeing baby stand for it's first time. I could watch them for hours too. We did try a goat for weed control in Elk Grove, but he had a bad habit of running up to us and putting his feet up on our shoulders, knocking us backward at times. An enthusiastic happy greeting, just too much for us! We just needed a well-behaved (or shorter) goat, hehee
You are most welcome. Great pics. Wow, minutes after birth. I love the "billy-goats-gruff" beards.
They used sheep one year but said the goats are better because they don't destroy the native plants that they want to keep. The shepherd is thoughtful too. He put a little fence around a patch of poppies that was in their bigger fenced area so they wouldn't eat those. They move them around as they graze.
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