Enhancing Meat Goat Production through Controlled Woodland Browsing

Enhancing Meat Goat Production through Controlled Woodland Browsing

Summary

Wisely controlled browsing of Northeast woodlands by goat herds will increase incomes and reduce costs to goat owners, decrease woody plant control costs to woodlot owners and reduce the forest area treated with herbicides. The goal of this project is to eliminate the last information and communication barriers to widespread adoption of wise browsing by Northeast goat and woodland stewards. This project integrates research and demonstration in the Twin Tiers region of New York and Pennsylvania by assessing operational protocols designed to optimize meat goat weight gain while concurrently controlling interfering woody vegetation in forests.

Objectives/Performance Targets

• * The Cornell University Arnot Forest is serving research and extension needs with experiments that assess goat feeding systems and stocking rates in woodlands.
  * Within the Twin Tiers region, four “off site” teams of goat producers and woodlot owners will expand the demonstration/extension capacity of the project during the second and third project years.
  * All of the team members and leaders will pool data and experience to produce an operational enterprise budget.
  * Twin Tier goat producers, woodlot owners, foresters and county agents and agency personnel will visit a site and learn about woodland goat browsing with 10% initiating similar projects within a year of their visit.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Consistent with our targets, we established off-site research & extension collaborators in the southern tier of NY. Three locations worked with the project. Our target was for four, but we could not locate a fourth combination of producer and woodlot owner who met our criteria. Two potential teams were rejected and 2-3 additional inquiries didn’t materialize for several reasons. There was enthusiastic interest among people who contacted us about the project. Locations provided geographic dispersion to optimize efficiency in field days and were logistically accessible in a day-trip for project management activities. The teams consisted of a woodlot owner, a goat producer and an agency person (one each: Cooperative Extension, Soil Water Conservation District, and RC & D). Each team received a day-long training session, a “team workbook”, 20 goats, all necessary equipment, and feed. The teams were instructed to follow the necessary health and safety protocols established, but to think creatively about how to refine the efficiency of the project in a “real world” setting.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

1 – Goat weight gains and effectiveness of girdling were reduced relative to 2001. The pattern of striped maple girdling seemed relatively insensitive to diet and thus supports a strong recommendation for goats in the control of this species.
2 – The interesting and useful outcomes of off-site team experiences and deliberations included:
* Increase paddock sizes from ¼ acre to 1 acre for improved time efficiency on set-up. The four-fold increase in size was only about a doubling in time to install and an approximately three fold increase in duration of goat activity with similar affect on the vegetation.
* Contact with local power utility company to explore potential for goats on R-O-W vegetation maintenance
* Full time goat producers are challenged to find the time necessary to conduct standard farm chores and travel even to a near-by woodlot for tending woodland goats. Woodlot owners were instrumental in assisting the full time goat producers.
* Goats used in woodlots without sufficient woody browse will damage crop trees. In once case the goat producer observed goats girdling trees, but confused the species as an undesired species rather than the desired species being damaged. From this location and based on Arnot Forest data, we recommend a woodlot have approximately 9,000 stems per acre that are between 24” tall and 1” in diameter (see “Are you a candidate” fact sheet).
3 – As a result of the extension-outreach effort, many woodlot owners and goat producers are interested in “how to use goats in the woods”. Goat producers are primarily interested in how to use goats in their woods. They recognize the labor involved in traveling, an observation supported by goat producers on the collaborative teams. Woodlot owners are interested and comforted in knowing a system can be prescribed that will provide a very low risk to crop trees.
4 – Focal outreach programs for the project were to assist the teams in hosting field days. Two of the three teams were successful in hosting a field day. The third team suffered from poor advertising despite efforts by project staff to assist.
5 – Highlights from summaries of evaluations collected at the two successful team-based field days include:
* an average of 55 acres of crop or pasture land per respondent;
* an average of 62 acres of woodland per respondent,
* 42% (11 of 26 respondents, 63 participants) indicated they could see themselves active with goats-in-the woods because goats would: complement a beefalo operation, reclaim brushy woods, keep pastures clean, and one who was already doing it
* People who responded with interest in goats indicated they would likely use about 20 goats and put them in a variety of woodland conditions less than a mile from their house.
6 -During the field days, we meet a number of retired dairy or other livestock producers. Some of these individuals, all having strong emotional ties to livestock, expressed an interest in the project because it provides a connection to livestock, but doesn’t require the time and energy investment as does the dairy industry they retired from. Thus, retired livestock producers represent an additional target audience we’ll work to engage in 2003.
7 -A number of individuals associated with the project have demonstrated the interest and potential capacity to self-start themselves or others in ventures of a similar nature. These include: (1) a consulting forester in Greene County who recognizes goats as a useful “non-chemical” approach that landowners might utilize, (2) Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators in Steuben and Sullivan Counties who, from their livestock background, see the potential for meat goat operations especially in their heavily forested counties, and (3) a forest owner in Cattaraugus (a team member) who in retirement enjoys working with goats and has considered becoming a full time goat producer.
8 -Goat producers at field days strongly encouraged us to consider using dry does and cull weathers in the project, in addition to our use of juvenile meat goats. They recognized (as have we) the greater girdling potential of animals with mature teeth and the reduced nutritional needs of animals not in a growth phase. The 2003 project will incorporate mature animals into the protocol.

Collaborators: