“I hated dogs and goats and poop - now I love it,” he said. He’s gotten to know the animals so well they’ve become like friends. He made a living in the restaurant business and small truck driving before he bought his first goats after marrying a veterinarian. “They’re eating machines,” Gonzales said. With four stomachs, they eat their fill, then rest while they digest. They’re hardy and they nibble brush down to 3 or 4 inches, which prevents soil erosion, while sheep pull plants out by the roots. Goats are better than sheep for such work. “Goats don’t do a real good job on dead, dry grass,” he said. Oleander is poisonous and they don’t like dead grass, yet people hire goats for just that in the summer, Thrall said. Goats eat poison oak, blackberries, young palms and most other plants. “I think we need a million goats in California.”Īt Chaffey College on Thursday, 130- to 140-pound Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherd dogs blended in, their brown eyes watching for coyotes, people and other dogs as they sat or lay in the grass. He can’t help thinking goats would be an environmentally friendly solution to a sight that makes him sad. Pathak charges $100 per acre, with a minimum of $100, to cover transport costs from his Perris farm. He’ll hire out animals for plant control at fenced or walled properties as small as 5,000 square feet in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. He also has about 125 to 150 Boer, Lamancha and Nubian goats at Chaffey College, where machinery and herbicides proved too expensive to control tumbleweeds drifting into prison grounds.Īnshu Pathak raises goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas and water buffaloes for his Exotic Meat Market in Grand Terrace. While some projects require goats year-round, they’ll also take goats for short jobs at places like a federal courthouse in Pasadena, an Anaheim Hills subdivision or a 9-acre hilltop mansion in Chino Hills owned by the Chinese government. Gonzales, who operates Ranchito Tivo Boer Goats with his veterinarian wife, Liz, said he’ll hire out goats for property as small as 5 acres and travel to Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties. Thrall mostly takes jobs for 20 acres or more and runs 500 to 700 goats on a property after setting up a hot-wire fence. About 250 are needed to clean an acre a day, unless there’s heavy vegetation. People hire Thrall’s and Gonzales’ goats for flat land and hills. Thrall and Gonzales have regular contracts with cities and school districts, counties, state-owned properties such as the college and federal land owners.Īt least 10 years ago, the city of Norco hired goats for weed abatement on 122 acres now home to Silverlakes Sports Complex.īrought from Oregon, the goats took care of 40 percent of the land but got sick from a tobacco relative, said Assistant City Manager Brian Petree, who recommended goats for hilly terrain. Their animals chomp down shrubs, brush, grass and other plants - known as browse - for regular landscaping maintenance and to create defensible buffers of low-brush areas around houses and other buildings for wildfire protection. He plans to buy 100 more goats this winter. He’s getting five to six calls a week, while he got at most one call a week last year. That means fire danger will be high this summer, Gonzales said. Heavy rain since October has made plants grow like crazy. Gonzales and his friend and fellow goat owner, Corona-based B & T Cattle owner Rance Thrall, said they’re getting more requests for work than they can handle this year. Now some stood munching on lush greenery while others lay, digesting their food, in a fenced 80- to 100-acre field between the campus’ main building, housing construction and a state prison for men.
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