Wildfires have been and continue to be a serious threat in California. The danger of fire affecting your home and property can be lessened by proper management of the vegetation on your land. "Ladder fuels" is the term used to describe vegetation in the form of dry grass, bushes, brush, and small branches on trees, that give any fire passing through your land a "ladder" to the crown of the trees. Crown fires are one of the most dangerous types of fires, as once the treetops are involved, they tend to shoot burning embers long distances, and keep out of the reach of fire fighters on the ground.

There are several ways to get rid of unwanted brush and ladder fuels:

• Hand clearing is effective, but time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often leads to the workers getting a severe case of poison oak!
• The use of chainsaws and weed whackers are restricted during the fire season in some areas.
• Machine masticating will eliminate the brush, but next season, it will grow back from the roots left behind, sometimes more bushy than before.
• Bulldozers will do the job, but if you don't need a road or a pad cut in, this can be heavy-handed and costly.

Using goats to clear away unwanted brush is better for several reasons.

• Men and machines cannot work between rocks and down steep embankments or rocky cliffs like goats can.
• Burning brush is risky, leaves ugly black piles, and pollutes the air unnecessarily.
• Goats don't GET poison oak, in fact, they love to EAT it!
• Eliminating undesirable vegetation is usually not a one-step process---follow-up in succeeding seasons in usually required to accomplish your goals. Goats can perform this spot work inexpensively.
• Goats naturally eliminate ladder fuels as they work, seeking out those little green sprigs that occur on the sides of trees, between rocks, and regrowth from the roots left behind after other clearing methods have been used.
• Goats provide a natural follow-up to machine clearing, either immediately after, or the following season, to clean up re-growth.
• Goats don't need worker's compensation insurance or lunch breaks!
• Goats work cheap, and provide an added bonus in the form of entertainment.

Goat Brushers keeps several herds of hungry goats, who are ready to attack the unwanted vegetation on your property. The pictures on this page illustrate some of the ways we have helped homeowners reduce not only the fire danger around their homes, but to reclaim pasturelands from such undesirables as star thistle, blackberries, and poison oak.

What do goats eat? Just about any vegetation! They thrive on, indeed, they PREFER, brush as opposed to grasses. They will attack plants with gusto that other livestock such as horses and cattle, will not even touch. This makes their services valuable as a follow-up to other livestock, to remove these undesirable plants before the next grazing season.

Here is a partial list of the types of plants the goats eat:

• Star Thistle
• Bull Thistle
• Blackberries
• Poison Oak
• Coyote Bush
• Sage brush
• Curly Dock
• Sapling trees--oak, pine, cedar,bay/laurel
• Willow
• Cattails
• Various pond weeds
• Mint
• Manzanita
• Scotch broom
• Mountain Misery
• Madrone

Goats will not eat through the hard bark of mature trees. They pull down the lower branches with they front legs, and eat whatever they can reach. The mature tree remains unharmed.

Our goats are kept contained by solar-powered or battery-powered fence chargers, and electric mesh fencing. A guardian llama or livestock guardian dog (LGD) goes with the herd to discourage coyotes and dogs that may prey upon the goats. We check on the herd frequently, monitoring the integrity of the fences and the health and welfare of the animals.

Click here for more photos