Goat Grazing

Northwest Grazing offers goat grazing to help you manage vegetation. The goats do a great job helping reduce blackberries, poison oak, yellow starthistle, knapweed, scotch broom, as well as removing fine fuels to make your home fire safe. Goats are ruminants, like cows, sheep, and giraffes. Their unique multi-chambered digestive tract helps them digest these seemingly impossible-to-eat fibrous materials. They then return this material to the soil via their dung, increasing soil fertility, improving soil carbon and presenting opportunities to reclaim your land.

How We Work

First, we assess the property with you and develop a grazing plan. Once we have a plan, we show up, set up electric fences and deliver the livestock. We supply reliable and effective electric net fencing, 100+ goats, 1-2 livestock guardian dogs, water, and mineral tubs. We are on site daily to feed the dogs and make sure things are going well. We often segment jobs into small “pastures” and move the goats once or twice daily to make sure they don’t leave much behind.

For 2024, our herd will be over 100 animals so, we like to have a few acres to work with. Prices vary, but most jobs start around $1000. Cost is largely dependent on the size of the job and distance from White Salmon, WA.

Contact us today to figure out a goat treatment solution for you!

FAQs

  • Yes. Goats will eat poison oak. They don’t eat the roots, however, so the plants will grow back. This is why repeated grazing over many years is necessary if you chose to use grazing as your primary control method.

  • Yes. Goats eat new growth and leaves on blackberries, but won’t eat hardened canes in the middle. They do a wonderful job of opening up a sea of otherwise untouchable land presenting the bases of the plants to be easily dug out and removing the material they clear.

  • We are based in south central Washigton but available to work throughout Pacific Northwest.

  • Ruminants are herbivorous, hoofed animals with multi chambered digestive systems that have evolved to ferment and digest the tough, fibrous materials that us monogastric organisms don’t do so well with. They’re like little kraut machines, with a microcosm of gut flora that help break down all that stuff you watch them eat and wonder how they do it. Northwest Grazing specializes in small ruminant grazing using goats. Cows, deer, elk, and giraffes are some other local ruminants.

  • Yes. Goats are excellent at clearing and maintenance. However, since nature never sleeps, best results are obtained from repeated treatments. It may be necessary to graze more than once a year. Often times, it is repeated grazing over multiple years that produces the best results.

  • Goat grazing rates very depending on the area and the herd. Our cost is based on the cost to own and keep the animals through the winter plus the time and equipment necessary to move and contain them spread out across the available grazing days. The best way to keep the cost of a project down is to make the project bigger, so talk to your neighbors and see if you can turn your 2 acre job into a 10 or 20 acre job or more!

  • We use an electric net fencing that we set up and take down on site. The key to keeping the animals in is making sure they have enough to eat. We calculate the appropriate amount of animals for an area for the forage that is available there.