06/05/06 Creating soil and water with goats

Washington Ag June 5, 2006 You might be amazed at what you can do to the landscape with goats. At a recent multi-species grazing conference in Ritzville, keynote speaker An Pieschel of Tennessee State University, described how her Goats Unlimited land enhancement business got plants to grow on a lava flow in Hawaii. Pieschel: "It is called edging where you work on the edge of an area and y you keep bringing it out onto the lava. You eat the plants. The animals poop. You eat more plants. Poop. More growth. We also would go out and eat seeds in different areas and bring the animals back in and drop seeds." In California Pieschel used her goats to restore a dry creek bed back into the perennial stream it historically was. Pieschel: "That is where I really got into looking at how to manage different ages of animals and the different species of animals based on the plants coming back in so that we could bring the water back." While Pieschel's passion is goats she says what is most interesting in land enhancement is when you get to the point you can use goats, sheep and cattle together. That conference included a tour at Sprague Lake of a vegetation management project that's looking at the effects of multi-species grazing on weeds in wetlands. I'm Bob Hoff.