The goats not only eat the buck thorn leaves, they eat the berries rendering most of them no longer viable. I've done acres with the goats so far, after they eat the low stuff I go cut any additional tall buckthorn down and they eat the leaves and berries from that. They also eat the small red cedars.

The natives that take the biggest hit are boxelders and cherry, they love cherry bark from young trees.

Pigs pigs pigs

If they eat my black cherry, that's fine with me.

Same here, I cut cherries for them to eat, they hammer them

A good thing about goats is they love honeysuckle too.

It's probably nutritious for them.

I'll stick w/ goats. My goats should arrive in May.

I had an interesting scenario unfold this month. An acquaintance of my family is offering me to borrow some of his boer goats in exchange for doing some nuisance trapping at his farm.

Goats will eat the new emerging plants. But, they will come back the next year. I cut the larger seed -bearing plants off and paint them with Crossbow undiluted. The new emerging plants I sprayed with diluted Crossbow or Crossroads. They don't come back.

I will say, if you don't like the goats you won't like managing the buckthorn this way.

After the goats go through its very easy to go in and cut the big stuff down, next time the goats go in they will now be able to eat everything. Seeds are viable for 2 years, getting rid of buckthorn is at minimum a 3 year process no matter what.

Our woods had a area of huge elms, when they all died it became a huge mess of buckthorn, I feel the goats are the best way to catch up with it and I enjoy raising livestock, win, win.

X2

Do you have trouble with mice chewing the extension chord on your heated water dish?

That's always an interesting experience.

How much is there?

I have not had trouble with that.

trouble with goats used in any natural area is they are going to eat pretty much everything including buckthorn and honeysuckle. The collateral damage would be horrific.
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Most perennials will come back. So if you want get rid of buckthorn its going to take several years of goats. And even then you'll have to treat the larger ones that the goats don't kill.

Then if your lucky after several years of goats tearing up your land and denuding it its wide open for all manner of invasive plants. Burdock, thistles and so forth.

No way I would ever put goats in a natural area. The only way was if I knew their food preference matched what I wanted to get rid of and then it would be only for short enough period of time so once they got rid of the targeted stuff they'd be pulled before they started on the rest of the stuff.

I'll stick to cutting a treating the stumps with herbicide. While it maybe more time consuming and more than likely more expensive it is the best way with no collateral damage.

The areas I'm working in are solid buckthorn to the point it's hard to walk through, after the goats go through its way easier to work in the area. I've cut and poisoned these areas since I was a little kid 25 years ago with little progress, the goats are making short work of my worst areas and I can always put them back in for a tune up anytime.

You both make some valid points. It depends on the property & how you manage the goats. For the property I hunt on, the situation is like Dirty D where I don't want goats out there, for reasons like what he eludes to. On the other hand, my 5 acre homestead in a different township is perfect for goats, thus why I have some goats on order. Goats absolutely are not for everyone, in fact I'd say they are only good for a small % of certain situations & for people that have done their homework.

AJE
Invasive Species Coordinator
Robinson Creek Preservation Association

The way this spring is starting out I might need my goats sooner. I still need to find some cattle panels.

I attended a grazing conference today. This interesting group was involved:

https://grassworks.org/

I had never heard of them.