Posts Tagged: goats

San Juan Bautista ‘plant nerd’ connects with UC Cooperative Extension

When San Juan Bautista resident Michael Cent was looking for ways to rehabilitate a large backyard pasture infested with invasive foxtail weeds, he called Devii Rao, the UC Cooperative Extension range and natural resources advisor in San Benito County.

Though Rao works mainly with large, commercial producers, she was intrigued by Cent's well thought out plans to replace foxtail with more desirable plants using sustainable practices. She paid him a visit.

Behind the home sits a two-acre fenced pasture where previous owners grazed llamas and ran horses. The picturesque setting adjoins San Juan Creek and frames a panorama of farm fields and the Diablo Mountain Range. But the tableau was spoiled by fence-to-fence foxtails, an exotic plant that hails from the Mediterranean, offers poor forage value and presents nuisance characteristics.

“The seed heads get stuck in the eyes, ears and noses of livestock and pets,” Rao said. “Foxtail is an annual grass that is difficult to control, but that didn't stop Michael Cent from trying.”

Cent is a pharmacist and self-described plant nerd.

“He turned his foxtail problem into a science project,” Rao said.

As a pharmacist, Cent said he is technically a chemist. “When you look at botany as chemistry, if you drill down into all the chemical reactions going on, it's amazing.”

Cent tested the soil Ph and nutrients. He identified 12 plants that would thrive under his pasture conditions and potentially out-compete the foxtails.

“In my research, much of what I see is not native,” Cent said. “My expectations to plant only natives have tempered. It's good to do within reason, but if a benefit of a non-native species outweighs a lesser advantage of being native, I'll go with the non-native species.”

Cent borrowed a tractor to break up the soil and reseeded by hand with his chosen grass and broad leaf plants. He kept detailed notes.

• Birdsfoot trefoil grew a dense carpet that choked out everything.
• Crimson clover germinated and grew quickly early in the season, but didn't do as well as anticipated.
• Harding grass was seeded specifically to out-compete the bristly ox-tongue, another undesirable plant.
• Chicory has a deep taproot, which helps it survive the dry season.
• Oxalis has come in like gangbusters, even though it wasn't seeded.

At first Cent regularly mowed the pasture to keep down the foxtails, but when the job became forbidding, he contracted with a company to bring in goats to aid control.

After four years of effort to overcome foxtail with grazing goats and seeding plants, Cent has come to a realization.

“I thought I could set it in motion and it would take care of itself,” Cent said. “But it's going to take a sustained effort.”

What drives Cent's devotion to rehabilitating a pasture with extensive plant research and management? The miracle of life, he said.

“The marvel of putting a seed in the ground, managing it and seeing what becomes of it. It's fascinating,” Cent said.

Olive Harvest at Grumpy Goats Farm

Yesterday I was an agritourist. Pamela Marvel and Stuart Littell, owners of Grumpy Goats Farm, in the Capay Valley of Yolo County, invited me to be part of their annual olive harvest, joining the "friends and family" contingent and picking alongside a hired picking crew. Grumpy Goats is a twenty acre organic farm planted with multiple varieties of olives that are pressed into prize-winning extra virgin olive oil. For me, the day was an adventure. I got to enjoy a sunny fall day being part of an ancient rite of the season, and I got to spend a few hours with some people whose paths don't often cross my own.

For Pamela and Stuart, harvest means picking almost a couple of tons of olives by three o'clock in the afternoon, loading the bins onto the flatbed truck and driving them to the olive mill to be pressed into prize-winning oil. The day started with the light. The crew had already pulled into the driveway with their cars and pickup trucks at about 6:30 a.m. when Stuart went to meet them. Everyone strapped on picking baskets, put on gloves and were ready to start the day. The eight acres of producing olive trees on twenty acre Grumpy Goats Farm are still young, but they were full of green and purple fruits ready for picking. The crew got busy quickly, three or four people circling each tree to rake the small branches gently by hand into picking baskets, then dumping the baskets into harvest bins laid along each row.

Being a guest, I didn't arrive until 9:30 or so, after a beautiful drive through the surrounding farm land. Stuart was there to meet me, introduced me to the other friends and family, and offered me coffee and pastries. With my own picking basket strapped on, I started picking. The young trees were soft and kind, giving their fruit easily with a gentle pull. Even the lowest branches almost dragging on the ground bore olives to harvest. The rhythm was easy on the body - no ladders to climb and lots of trays close by to dump olives when the picking basket began to get heavy. The crew of men and women worked fast around me, and I learned by watching. The other family and friends guests and I tried to keep up, and talked as we picked.

After a few hours it was lunch time. Stuart and Pamela put on lunch for the "family and friends", while the crew gathered to eat by their vehicles or in the shade of the trees. We talked and ate and enjoyed the pleasant day, learning more about each others' lives. Then it was time to go back to picking. This time I joined in with the hired crew, trying not to get in their way.

Everyone was talking in Spanish, and I don't talk Spanish, but the talk sounded light-hearted for the most part. Some workers had brought small radios, so we had music to pick by, or music drifting from between the rows sometimes. One friendly woman from the picking crew noticed that I didn't have gloves or a hat, so she went off and came back with a fresh clean pair of white gloves and a bandana for me to wear. We chatted a bit as we picked, with her little bit of English and my even smaller bit of Spanish. She told me she was a mother of eight and a grandmother of five, so far. She lives in Woodland, but has family in Los Angeles and two sons in Mexico.

I thought of the election earlier this week. I thought of our new president-elect and the fearful changes that might be coming for this kind woman and her family and her friends. I wondered what harvest day would be like for Stuart and Pamela next year, or the year after. This agritourism adventure connected me briefly to people whose kindness and friendliness I hope to be able to repay before too long.

We quit at three so Stuart could load the six big bins of olives onto the flatbed truck with the forklift and get them to the mill in time to be pressed. The day was still young when I made my way happily home with a bottle of last year's good organic extra virgin olive oil and a bag of fresh-picked olives to try to cure. Thank you to all. Learn more about Grumpy Goats Farm and olive oil.

Goats can help with yellow starthistle control

Goats' penchant for eating almost any plant material can make them a valuable management tool for landowners faced with a yellow starthistle infestation.

Yellow starthistle is thought to have been introduced into California from Chile during the Gold Rush. The weed readily took hold in California valleys and foothills, thriving in areas where the soil has been disturbed by animals grazing, road construction and wildland firebreaks. Today, yellow starthistle is a very common sight in vacant lots and fields, along roadsides and trails, in pastures and ranch lands, and in parks, open-space preserves and natural areas.

Capable of growing six feet tall and bearing flowers surrounded by inch-long spines, yellow starthistle reduces land value, prevents access to recreational areas, consumes groundwater and poisons horses. (Yellow starthistle isn't all bad. Beekeepers have found that it can provide an important late-season food source for bees.)

Large property owners use a variety of methods to control yellow starthistle - chemical, mechanical and biological - but UC scientists believe individual homeowners are a key to containing and eliminating this invasive pest.

That's where goats can come in. Goats will eat yellow starthistle at all phases of growth, including the mature, spiny stage, when it is not palatable to other browsers and grazers.

"When goats eat yellow starthistle, they open up the canopy and allow sunlight to hit the ground," said Roger Ingram, UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor. "That allows other, more beneficial seeds to come up and grow. If you can get other plants growing in there, the competition will choke out yellow starthistle."

Landowners can raise goats themselves and direct them to areas of starthistle infestation with portable fencing, or they can lease the animals exclusively for vegetation control. More information on yellow starthistle management is available from the UC Integrated Pest Management Program.

View the video below for more information on goats' browsing preferences.

Read a transcript of the video.

Goats can be green weed whackers

Interest in using goats to clear unwanted vegetation on rangeland is growing in popularity, according to UC Cooperative Extension livestock farm advisor Roger Ingram. In a Sacramento Bee story published today, Ingram confirmed writer Ramon Coronado's central thesis: Goats can be a green answer to wildfire prevention.

Coronado reported that more than 60 people attended a recent forum where Ingram discussed the pros and cons of using goats instead of machinery, chemicals and weed whackers.

The use of goats for weed abatement has drawbacks, however. Here are some of the concerns:

• Left unchecked, the animals can overgraze, leading to erosion and flash flooding
• The weeds targeted by goats are the first to grow back and the first to dry up and die, which could create more wildfire fuel
• The goats will produce CO2 during their munching and the trucks that deliver and move them around will also contribute to pollution

Ingram countered, according to the story, "You have to look at the big picture."

Goats on rangeland.

Transgenic goats cause a stir

Not surprisingly, a story in yesterday's Sacramento Bee about goats that have been genetically modified with human genes is generating comments on the newspaper's Web site.

The story was prompted by a UC Davis news service press release by Pat Bailey.

In short, UC Davis animal scientists James Murray and Elizabeth Maga engineered a small herd of dairy goats to produce high levels of a human antibiotic-like protein in their milk. Pigs fed milk from the transgenic goats had significantly lower levels of E. coli bacteria in their small intestines than those raised on regular goat's milk. The scientists feel the results mean the goat milk could one day be used to protect or cure people of diseases, especially in poor regions of the world.

Comments on the story ranged from outraged to indifferent to funny.

"Completely disturbing... on so many levels," said one.

"What's disturbing is the irrational fear," wrote another.

"It might be disturbing, but it sure explains a lot about my mother in law," commented a writer.

Those interested in learning the ins and outs of dairy goat production may wish to attend a workshop May 15 in Merced. UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Deborah Giraud says the market for goat milk is growing due to increasing popularity of specialty goat milk cheese and yogurt. For all the details and registration information, click here.

Dairy goats.

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