Dad kept goats when I was quite small, so I don’t remember them, but he said they would simply climb fences. Friends used to milk them; when they got into poison ivy the milk tasted terrible. We had other friends who raised them to butcher, and would treat the goats to Copenhagen snuff, which they loved. Said it de-wormed them. I dunno.
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Agreed. It’s easy for me to talk from my conspicuous lack of a woodlot, but I do recognize there is no one-size-fits-all approach here. Heck, even in Kansas on the prairie, it’s pretty widely accepted that burning is necessary to maintain prairie, but your timing is going to be totally different if you’re managing for optimum cattle forage or for maximum biodiversity.
I’ve heard it said that if a fence holds water it might hold a goat.
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Yes, fire can severely damage some trees
Especially young ones .
Some have thicker bark when old and can resist damage.
(Savannah ecosystem )
I have envisioned , clearing flammable material from around the trees one wishes to keep, a double (redundant ) fire break around the perimeter , invite 20 friends over, and the fire department ! And have a all night fire.
So at like 30 ft. Spacing for the keepers , this could be a easy way to control the brush , and other unwanted trees.
It is thought that the native Americans ,used fire to manage the forest ," way " easier than beating on a tree with a rock !
Red. Maple (one of my worst weed trees ) is very easily controlled by fire. Because of its thin bark.
And reports say that red maple is so common now, because of the lack of frequent fires.
My belief is that the Native Americans set fire in the fall.
This would remove the leaf litter ,so as to be able to find nuts of oak / hickory / chestnut ,and to favor these species , because of their relative tolerance to fire.
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Yeh, some days I did think of drowning them !
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I have an area of around 1.5 acres where buckthorn (both common and glossy) has taken over. The only cost and time effective manner to deal with it is to basal spray with herbicide. I began the war last winter and have been continuing this fall. With a few more days of spraying, I should have over 90% controlled.
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This is an interesting read on benefits of controlled burns:
I would guess that the benefit of controlled burns in reducing the long-term risk of fire would vary a lot between locations. It seems like most of the “forest fires” in North Carolina are just very low intensity fires in which fallen leaves burn on the forest floor in the winter. I know there have been a few more serious forest fires in North Carolina, but it seems like most of those are in the mountains. I think rhododendron may contribute to those fires, but rhododendron doesn’t even grow in my area. The slopes of the mountains probably contribute to those fires, too. Out West I imagine dead branches and such may accumulate over time, but I assume things rot a lot faster in places with more rain, such that that accumulation of flammable material isn’t so much an issue here. I can see some potential benefits to controlled burns in my area, but the benefits I can see don’t have anything to do with avoiding uncontrolled fires.
I’ve kept goats for 12 or 13 years. I normally keep them in temporary fences made up of two aluminum wires. That’s a very minimal fence compared to what most people use for goats, but so long as I rotate them frequently (which I’m doing anyways to avoid intestinal worms without medications) and so long as I’m keeping them happy, they mostly stay in the fence. When they do get out they mostly either stay just outside their fence or they show up on the back porch of the house. My cows, in contrast, practically never get out, but although goats take a little more effort and occasionally can be a real headache, most of the time they’re fine as far as staying in my fences. I did have one goat I re-sold because she kept getting out of my fences. Otherwise, I’ve always been able to go to some additional temporary effort and put an end to any problems with goats getting out. I can’t think of any trees I’ve ever lost to my goats, but they have done some damage to some fruit trees once or twice when they’ve gotten out, but the trees were able to recover from it. Even though I said my cattle practically never get out, I have actually lost a few trees/grafts to cattle rubbing on them or simply running them over when they’ve gotten out or gotten loose.
I haven’t found goats to be very useful at controlling poison ivy. Cattle actually do a better job for me than goats when it comes to poison ivy. Goats are great at cleaning up areas overgrown with brambles and briars. One big limitation for me with using goats to control weeds is that if I were to put my goats in an area for a long time to continuously eat down some problem species or if I were to rotate goats into an area multiple times in one growing season to do the same, then intestinal worms could get ahead of the goats faster than the goats might get ahead of the problem species. They have been very useful at controlling things like invasive Chinese privet (which I guess is technically an invasive but is so widespread and so well established that it probably makes more sense to simply call it naturalized). Because privet is semi-evergreen here, it makes great winter forage for my goats. I typically overwinter my goats here in zone 7 North Carolina on about 1/4 bale of hay per goat for the whole winter. So although I got goats at first mainly in order to control things like privet, I’ve actually come to appreciate privet for goat feed. But using the goats to knock it back hard every winter basically keeps it from ever going to seed. And then the goats give me a reason to cut down any privet that’s gotten taller, so I’ll cut down a little here and a little there every winter so they can reach all the leaves to eat them. It’s work I might not otherwise get around to doing. I feel like I have privet very much under control thanks to my goats. I have a few more goats at the moment, but I think just 2-3 goats would be enough to accomplish the brush control I depend on goats for on my 43 acres of about half open and half more or less forested acres. If my only goal for keeping goats were just brush control, I might just buy a few at auction every year or two, rotate them through the areas I wanted them to eat down, and then re-sell them within a few months.
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What variety are they? My neighbor has fainting goats and they’ll pull poison ivy up and eat the roots even.
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Today we got the band saw mill assembled and played a bit milling up a small pine log to get familiar with it’s operation. I had posted this spring that we had been hit with a Macro-burst and our wood lots had sustained significant damage. Here’s a pic of the mill and some of the logs we have ready to go. This is just a portion of what was damaged, we have many more piles and more trees to clean up and bring out for milling.
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