Two dozen goats are hard at work snacking on walls of weeds at the end of Spears Avenue. In their fenced enclosure, a 7-month-old Great Pyrenees tends to the wandering kids, keeping them from straying too far from the herd.
The Chattanooga Department of Parks and Outdoors is trying alternative landscaping, trading weed whackers and herbicides for hungry goats and herd dogs.
Thorny briars, poison ivy and other pesky plants make the Stringers Ridge trailhead and pump track at Spears Avenue difficult for a small staff of landscapers to safely maintain, according to Lucy Ellis, the city’s natural resource project coordinator. Over the past few years, she said, the department has been working on a contract to integrate specialized landscaping into the city’s site maintenance — the newest addition being goats.
Goats with their four stomachs can regularly ingest invasive plant entrees of kudzu and briar throughout their daily graze, said local FourOFarm shepherd Kelsey Oliver. Oliver’s herd has cleared an acre of the Stringers Ridge overgrowth since June 14, and she expects it will take about another week to finish the rest of the 2-acre job. The goats approach their task in zones, migrating down their enclosure in intervals as they graze.