A herd of goats is making quick work of an overgrown thicket of blackberries and brambles clogging a public alleyway in Qualicum Beach.
What humans might see as a prickly, unfriendly mess, these 19 goats view as a tasty treat. They are gobbling up the weeds, leaving only large stalks for their owners to snip and clear out.
It a pretty good gig for the goats: They eat, rest and digest the food, and get up and browse again. If it’s a clear night, they graze under the moonlight.
Lynette Twigge, municipal park foreperson, had seen other goats do similar work and ran the idea past senior management. A homeowner expressed concern about overgrowth in the alley behind homes between Sixth Avenue and Garden Road West.
The herd of Nubian goats started its work Sunday and is booked through the end of the week.
The goats belong to Moira Barron and Rick Bennie, who started Oceanside Goatscaping Vegetation Control in January.
The couple have a farm and already had the goats, which they use for milk, yogurt and cheese. They had been living in California — they had goats there, too — but returned to Qualicum Beach to be with family.
When a job comes up, Barron and Bennie load the goats into a trailer to take them to the site, where they will stay around the clock, enclosed in mobile fencing. Their owners stay on site, as well.
The herd queen is Puck. When it’s time to go somewhere, Barron and Bennie call her and hold her collar and the other goats fall in behind. There’s a pecking order among the animals, all with names from mythology — except for Lego, who was named by their grandson.
When the herd’s at work, everyone goes. The youngest three kids are less than two weeks old.
The grazing goats — all does — are a colourful sight. Some are black, some brown, some a combination. They have stripes and spots. Some are white, like the herd’s sire, a Saanen dairy goat that lives at another location.
Normally, a job like clearing the alley would involve noisy equipment like a backhoe and dump truck, Twigge said. Instead, the goats were brought in as a green solution — one that won’t damage the substrate in the alley.
“I was watching them eat rose hips,” she said. “They loved it.”
