Having read the article and thought about the problems Cecil pointed out, it seems to me that the main problem is that for any likely sized urban lawn, a sheep is simply too large a grazer. I’m not sure how small ruminants come- maybe a pygmy goat? Or if rabbits can sustain themselves mostly on coarse grass. But definitely it would be better to have greater numbers of something much smaller. You could fine tune the balance of grazers to living space much better, and if they bred prolificly you could reduce your herd to a small reserve of breeders over the winter and have them repopulate in the spring.
Personally, I thought the guinea pigs were the cutest idea. You definitely wouldn’t want to leave them caged in the heat, but the image of roving herds of squee-ing guinea pigs sticks in the mind.
That pic illustrates Cecil’s point: The caption says that they’re grazing the lawn, but the pic shows them gathered around either a feed or water trough.
A friend of a friend used to hire out a flock of sheep for precisely this purpose - his customers were mostly the National Trust, or other people with extensive grounds they wanted to keep well-cropped.
Unfortunately, the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak a few years back, with the consequent clamp-down on animal movements, rather put an end to this scheme. Pity, really. It’s not everyone who gets to pimp sheep for a living, legitimately.
Dunno about Turin (or Tulsa) but here in New Zealand people with grass
verges quite commonly put a goat on a long chain hanging from a wire (with a little hut for shelter) - works fine!
Years ago while travelling through New Zealand I noticed that along some roads one could see what appeared to be doghouses. Eventually I found out that they were shelters for goats that the highway maintenance folk employed to keep the growth down.
We raised sheep in a 5 acre field, they did keep the grass down, plus we had to feed them grain and hay. They also ate our grapes and anything leafy. We kept 3 until our children had left home, then our yard turned into a big forest like area with a lot of trees and shrubs. We cleared it out and kept some trees for the birds as there are cherry, mulberry,buckthorn, apple, honeysuckle and Asian dogwood.
We cut around the trees and it is a lot of work, but it looks like a park. We do alot of the work by hand,We do cut the grass and pick up some of the leaves with a riding mower but we also do a lot of raking. If we went back to the sheep we would have to put up better fencing, and shearing them, feeding and delivering lambs is also a lot of work,plus the electric it takes to pump the water that they need so either way it is a lot of work. If we cut down all the “weed” trees it would also mean getting rid of the wood, if let to grow there is a danger of fire if some one went by and threw out a cigerette butt.
The Sawtooth Ramps piece of landscape art alongside the M8 in Scotland has a flock of brightly coloured sheep cropping its grass. Apparently easier than trying to mow the sloping sides.
[sub](And, why yes, this post was prompted by the Andrew Graham-Dixon item in tonight’s The Culture Show on BBC2 …)[/sub]
Just chiming in to say that dear Cecil kinda glossed over the notion that you could sell any wool after shearing, or wash/card/dye/spin it yourself for knitting and such.
Goat’s milk can also be harvested if you go that route.
Bi-products of use and worth are not something you can get out of a lawnmower.
I’m just enjoying the picture of Hal Briston, napping in a lawn chair while one of his sheep eats his hat. Only two more days until that goes away though.