The General Services Administration figured why hire laborers, at a cost of about $5,000, when a herd of goats could do the job faster and cheaper for less than $2,000. It took the goats only three days of chomping to clear away the overgrowth in back of the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Courthouse, while it was estimated the workers would have taken a week.

 

The goats also were a better option than bulldozing the area, which would have disturbed the soil and potentially left behind oil or gasoline residue from the equipment.

 

Goats also have been put to use outside Fort Dickerson, a Civil War fortification in Knoxville, Tennessee, to get rid of an abundance of kudzu that was harming native vegetation. And they have been used in hilly areas of downtown Los Angeles that are difficult for mowers to reach.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

GSA Deploys Goat Herd to Save Energy, Money (General Services Administration)

Annual Hillside Brush Cleaning Goats vs. Manual Labor (General Services Administration) (pdf)

Goats Do a Better Job Than Government Workers (by John Stossel, Fox Business News)

Goats Used as Green Method for Ridding Fort Dickerson of Kudzu (by Hyun Chung, Knoxville News)