Goats Are The Future!

Julie Williams follows up with a story on the goats thinning native grass areas at Pasatiempo and shares this from Terry Hutchens.

Terry Hutchens, extension goat specialist at the University of Kentucky, notes that employing goats for brush clearing is a West Coast idea making its way east. But then, so are goats.

“It’s been used in the West for years, but east of the Mississippi River, it’s a phenomenon,” said Hutchens, who predicts that using goats for brush management (on golf courses or otherwise) will be common practice in 10 years.

For the past two years, Hutchens has been involved in a student research project that introduced goats to three landfills located on Bluegrass Station, a former Army base in Fayette County, Ky., now operated by the state. Groups of four goats first were released in quadrants slightly smaller than a half-acre to assess their land-clearing capabilities. The project was taken one step further when goats ended up at Avon Golf Course, a public nine-hole facility on Bluegrass Station, on a two-month trial basis.