Goats as Lawn Mowers

^{Photo Credit to Angela Tarantino}

So a friend of mine has a beautiful home in the East Bay (of San Francisco, CA) with some incredible views and a lot of rolling green hills right behind his backyard. I usually go over there to swim or barbecue on a warm sunny day. When I arrived there the other day, I noticed a herd of at least 100 goats that were eating grass so fast as if they've never eaten before! They were really cute to watch and surprisingly they let you get really close to them without running away. My friend was saying that every year a few guys and there cattle dog come put a little orange fence up and bring all the goats in to act as lawn mowers. I thought it was a great eco friendly way to mow the lawn.

Coincidentally, a recent article came up that Google is also utilizing this idea by "hiring" 200 goats to mow the campuses at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Dan Hoffman (who heads the companies real estate services) wrote: "Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we're not 'kidding'). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time." This is also useful because California is known for raging wildfires and so keeping the brush to a minimum is important. Its unlikely that every house hold home will adopt a goat to mow their lawn every Sunday afternoon but its nice to see big companies do what they can to help the environment.

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