Goats do roam
I'm sort of surprised that this is a new approach to the kudzu problem. I've heard that goats have been used a lot in various places across the country for general highway cleanup. They're environmentally friendly weed whackers, and they'll eat pretty much anything, so it stands to reason that they'd be useful against kudzu. I'm amused, though,
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They spit, and kick.
They have a guard-dog mentality in relation to things like sheep and goats (I think they aren't smart enough to realise they aren't small llamas).
They are larger than donkeys.
They engage in co-operative hostility.
Anything less than a pack of dogs, wolves. actively driving a herd/flock, to pick off stragglers, or selecting a llama as the target, isn't going to get away with it, and is likely to end up wounded, if not dead.
The goats won't, I think, eat the oleander, but they are shit hot on poison oak/ivy. Calif. pays people to pasture them in places like the Los Padres National Forest.
They have drawbacks, they will scour the landscape to a height of about 5 feet. They are close croppers and will pull plants out by the roots (this is the real cause of the sheep and cattle wars. The cattle ranchers couldn't graze on land the sheep had been on, becase the grass was too short), so the land they graze has to be seeded with something after they leave or it will go bare.
They are one of the major sources of desertification in northern Africa.
But they are useful.
TK
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