This has come up before – causing me to review my goat info. Apparently, the goat literature says goats don’t eat grass. As Duke of Rat and some of my goat owning pals can attest, they do so!
When it comes to cow and horses, they will not tear up the grass if they have enough to eat, hooves or no. The problem is that most critters like the tender young baby shoots. A rabbit can kill grass, and will if it feels that spiteful about new growth. I’ve seen freaking geese kill grass with their filthy geese feet and horrible goose guano. (Yes, it’s true that they make good guard animals, but they’ll destroy what you hope to guard and terrorize small children.)
Okay, this has nothing to do with the actual topic, but despite the fact that I’d seen the thread title this morning, and read it correctly, I looked at it just now and saw:
Do Goats Make Good Lawyers?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
When I was in college, my roommate’s mother raised goats, and he, owing to some unfortunate accidents involving the free-range goats and a mountain bike, hated the animals. Upon finding out about his, a friend of ours put an ad in the college newspaper:
Then she tried to get all her friends to call us about the goat. Of course, we didn’t get the newspaper, so all we knew is that people were suddenly calling us about “the goat you have for sale.”
On a serious note, there’s a rancher just outside town here who has been using livestock to control noxious weeds on his ranch. He’s using goats in some places, but I think he’s had more success with sheep and cattle.
I just have a couple of anecdotal thingies to add:
When we lived in Oakland, we often saw goats being used to control underbrush in the redwood/eucalyptus forests around there. They were able to get around just fine on the steep hillsides and presumably thought that the tough scrubby plants there were just delicious.
I also have a friend in Vermont who used to rent out his flock of sheep to ski resorts in the summertime. Apparently they were useful for keeping the grass, etc., on the slopes nicely trimmed.
Since you think a llama sounds cool but are wary of an ordinary robotic lawn mower, how about a robotic llama? Clips the grass neatly, makes no mess, and has no high-speed blades with which to force humanity into lunar slavery! That’s what I’d go with.
Earl’s story reminded me of what I call the ‘flammable sheep’. Along the M25 near Heathrow there is a reservior with steep banks with sheep grazing. These sheep aren’t white & fluffy, but grey and sooty looking due to the exhaust fumes. I figure they have enough petrol fumes in their wool to make them burst into flames.