TUCSON, Ariz. — Maintaining a yard can be a whole lot of work...and the work never ends. You chop down the weeds and they simply grow back. But one neighborhood brought in some landscapers who don't see weeds as a problem---they see them as food.
Easements and alleyways can be a real problem. They get overgrown with weeds and sometimes the weeds can get so high they become hiding places for burglars. So what's a neighborhood to do? Bring in some goats.
A lot of workers can not wait to break for lunch. But for this work crew eating is the whole point.
Not a baaaad idea! Midtown Tucson neighborhood hires goats to control weeds @kgun9 pic.twitter.com/y6Nq0dM554
— Craig Smith (@csmithKGUNTV) January 9, 2019
The Garden District neighborhood hired a company called Urban Grazers to bring in these living lawnmowers. For the goats, weeds are not a nasty nuisance, they're a tasty treat.
Meg Johnson heard about hiring goats as a natural way of weed control. She says more than 40 neighbors were willing to pay 25 dollar per house to bring in the herd.
KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked her: “So when you said, 'Let's hire some goats' they didn't say, “Are are you crazy,’ they said, ‘Great idea’?
Meg: "Oh yeah and everybody wanted to watch. I anticipate throughout the day we'll have way more people here than goats."
Meg says besides fighting weeds the goats are fighting crime because burglars use overgrown alleys to hide themselves and their loot.
Tutti Hendricks says they had a couple of goats on a ranch and decided they ought to take the goats urge to eat just about anything and put it to work.
So they grew the herd and it grew into a business.
Christopher Jones of Urban Grazers says, "Absolutely, herbivores, not herbicides. We want to save the planet as best we can. We want to keep away from spraying. These guys do a good job of it..."
And local governments have gone after troublesome plants like buffelgrass by hiring the herd to do what comes naturally.
