The herd of 17 goats was all business.
The animals, white with patches of bronze, black and mahogany brown, meandered along in a west metro pasture this week, chomping away at buckthorn and prickly ash, leaving in their path groupings of scraggly sticks.
Their buffet of roughage is part of an experiment to get rid of unwanted invasive plants and weeds without herbicides.
"The idea is to keep grazing and keep grazing and get those roots to burn their energy out," said Tim Reese, farm operations supervisor at Gale Woods Farm in Minnetrista, where the goats were grazing. "If we can do this on a small scale, then maybe we'll be able to replicate it elsewhere."
The working farm, part of the Three Rivers Park District, provides outdoor learning for daily visitors, summer camp students and school groups.
It was Reese's idea to try the goats as an experiment on 4.5 acres of the farm that he wants to return to its native state — diverse grasses for pasture intermixed with huge oak trees. Previous attempts to cut the persistent weeds and paint their stalks with herbicides have been expensive, temporary and not particularly good for the environment, he said, so goats were worth a try.
"They're browsers, so they'll go after the leaves on shrubby things before they'll actually eat the grass that's on the ground, so this is the right kind of forage for them to eat," Reese said.
The animals, a relatively recent breed called Kiko goats, aren't the tame variety that cozy up to children at petting zoos. They're twice as large and skittish around people and they stick close together. The buck of the herd, the only one with a name — Mephisto — is a 200-pounder more than twice the size of the others.