Grazing Goats Help Prevent Wildfire Threats

NV Energy and the Nevada Division of Forestry are working with grazing goats to prevent wildfire threats along the Clear Creek watershed in Carson City.

More than 300 goats will be spending eighty days on the hillsides near Carson City chomping away dead grass, trees, and other fire fuels.

"We've done machines, we've done man-power, and now we're in the grazing stages of our Natural Disaster Protection Plan," says Mark Regan, Fire Mitigation Specialist with NV Energy. "These goats are mapped out across more than 100 acres and will be out here getting to places machines or crews couldn't normally reach."

Fire specialists say the grazing will remove vegetation that poses a threat to spreading wildfires; if one were to break out. Forestry officials say the watershed has not seen a wildfire threat in more than 100 years, but being prepared is better than ignoring the growing cheat-grass and dead trees in the areas alongside Highway 50 towards Spooner Lake.

"Our goats are known to graze sagebrush, manzanita, and bitterbrush," says the goat caretakers with High Desert Graziers. "These are Spanish goats and they could eat all day if they could. We take care of them each day and night. We make sure all of them are getting plenty of water while they work."

Sheep have been used across Northern Nevada for this purpose for many years. Recently, this project was granted funding by Senate Bill 508, which gives the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources money to improve wildfire prevention, update natural disaster plans, and fund restoration across Nevada.

chomping away dead grass, trees, and other fire fuels.

Goats will only eat dead stuff if they're starving. They eat some grasses(live), shrubbery, most anything with thorns. They'll clean up the floor to a height of 4-8 feet of most things live. They don't eat dead logs or dead standing trees. They'll eat the bark off the bottom of a living tree, killing it, before they eat dead stuff. They might snack on a few brown leaves if it gives them a nutrient they need and they'll crunch them down with their feet walking on them.

I've got three meat goats eating away at the edge of forest and they've made it easier for me to walk and drive around on my little tractor to take out the dead trees. Next step will be taking out some live trees to clear or thin out areas so the sun can get in and grasses/forbes etc can grow, some of which I'll have to seed. Some trees I'll cut down and some will be pushed out with a bulldozer. All will be used for firewood, our only source of heat.

If I didn't follow up on where the goats have been, they'd end up clearing that 4-8 feet height but there would still be a dense canopy from there up to 50 foot that would keep it so shaded that nothing would grow on the floor except for some oak sprouts and the trees would still produce tons of leaf litter(fire hazard).

The environmentalists have us growing trees on rows on tree farms but we can't thin out natural forests for wood products because "the process damages the land" and "releases precious nitrogen from the soil" and operating that big equipment "contributes to globull climate change".

What does thousands of acres burning and replacing people's houses and everything in them do?

and soil management. I mentioned cutting down some trees and bulldozing others. Our property is in the Ozarks and so it’s hilly. The bulldozer won’t be going anywhere near the hills. I’ll cut those down so that the roots are still there holding the soil in place and other things will replace the slowly rotting roots. I’ve watched some top soil get rinsed away in places I’ve cleared and have seen what happens on hills cleared with machinery. Gullies down to subsoil.

And they fertilize the property too at the same time.

My mother raised Nubians, the one on the right in the picture looks just like most of them. They wre always bottle fed from the minute they were born, acted like little puppies. She milked the goats and kept the colostrum in the freezer, first in ice cube trays, then zip lock bags. They were fed that for a day or two then straight milk from any of a half dozen goats. She put 8 calf nipples on a 5 gallon bucket, used it to feed the group at one time instead of individual bottles.

Once they started to eat vegetation, which didn’t take long, the very firs thing they wanted was the rose bushes. Second was the dogwood trees. (my mother found out the hard way before I got there). If you tied them up so they couldn’t reach theither, their number one favorite thing was...POISON IVY...No, I’m not joking, I watched them do it. They would stick their heards through goat wire mesh fence and get stuck trying to reach poison ivy, when they had plenty nice grass and weeds everywhere. I had to pull a head out of the fence at least once a wee.

Once bottle fed, they were just like pets. Follow you around the yard like puppies. The only one that was ornery was her oldest goat, Clarabelle, who she got from someone else, not bottle raised. Tried to attack me every time I went inside her pen, without fail. She’d rear up on her hind legs, try to head butt me with those horns, I’d have to grab her by the horns, twist her head sideways and pull her down to the ground a couple of times before she’d finally leave me alone and let me feed her...Yes, they got grain feed after feasting on weeds and poison ivy all day. I still had to watch her every minute I was inside her pen. They also loved French Mulberry. Seems to also have medicinal uses for humans, used by natives for dropsy, fevers, malaria and stomach ache.

https://www.healthbenefitstimes.com/french-mulberry/

This grew wild all over our property, I’d cut some branches off 2 or 3 times a week, the goats would run to get to it. They loved those berries. I’d cut all I could carry, a handful in each hand, 4 or 5 goats would wipe it out in a couple of minutes. With goats around, no need for a lawnower.

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