Can My Goat Dairy Be Eco-Friendly?

Tamsin Cooper finds greener ways to manage productive goats

- Tamsin Cooper

Goats have a reputation for being destructive and difficult to contain, but can they simultaneously encourage biodiversity while remaining productive? Provided that the right animals are managed in an environmentally sensitive manner, regenerative farmers have already shown that they can.

HOW GOATS CAN HELP REGENERATION

For the soil to regenerate it needs a wide variety of plants, microbes, fungi, and insects. A balanced variety of native plants will encourage this healthy renewal and provide habitats and food for wildlife. When pastures are overstocked with grazing animals or when fields are sown with monocultures, this diversity is lost. However, a balance can be restored in time with the introduction of native plants and trees, while grassland can be kept open with carefully controlled light grazing.

Goats perform best when part of a system of complementary grazers in a mixed species environment with plenty of varied vegetation. Goats are particularly skilled at removing undergrowth in hard-to-access locations where other grazers and machinery cannot reach. They much prefer trees, shrubs, weeds and tall grasses to meadow grass, and thrive on variety. Whereas sheep and cattle will graze the sward, goats tend to browse around the paddock edges, snaffling brambles, gorse, nettles, thistles, and other spiky, thorny, or woody plants. Each plant becomes appetising to goats at a certain time of year. Goats are therefore useful for preventing the creep of brambles and other encroaching weeds into the field.