Photo By Scott Sturkol | Goats feast in a fenced-off area at Fort McCoy, Wis., as part of an effort to curb...... read more read more
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Someone possibly had the greatest of all time idea when they decided to try and utilize goats to fight a fight against invasive plant species.
Natural Resources Specialist Jessica Salesman with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch said Fort McCoy has been coordinating that fight with goats since 2023.
“Fort McCoy first tested the waters for potentially incorporating goat browsing into the suite of vegetation management tools in fall 2023,” Salesman said. “We placed them in wooded blocks choked with glossy buckthorn adjacent to the track and building 1147. That test was expanded to include blocks within training areas in 2024. We’re still in the testing phase and haven’t seen a substantial decrease in invasive brush cover yet, but I expect to see cover decreasing in the training areas next year.”
According to Brittanica.com at https://www.britannica.com/animal/goat, “domesticated goats are descended from the pasang (Capra aegagrus), which is probably native to Asia, the earliest records being Persian. In China, Great Britain, Europe, and North America, the domestic goat is primarily a milk producer, with a large portion of the milk being used to make cheese. One or two goats will supply sufficient milk for a family throughout the year and can be maintained in small quarters, where it would be uneconomical to keep a cow.
“Goats are browsers: they like to keep their heads up to eat available foliage,” the website states. “Goats are especially valued for eating inexpensive nutrient sources, such as woody plants and weeds, that other livestock typically won’t consume. A goat’s food is partially broken down and regurgitated as cud, which the goat chews to absorb the remaining nutrients.”
In 2025, goat plant mitigation efforts started in June.
“The goats started out in training area C-04 near firing point 417 the first week of June and have since browsed their way through blocks in C-15 and C-16,” Salesman said. “They will be in cantonment through August and then back out in C-04 by September. We hope to get a second browsing on all three training area units this fall, but that will depend largely on when we start seeing killing frosts. If it’s a warm fall, that could take us into October.”
Salesman said the cantonment blocks may need another year yet to show real progress in eliminating invasive brush.
“Even though the goats have been through more than once, there was a significant number of stems that were too tall and growing too close together for the goats to knock them down to access the tops, which means the plants still had plenty of canopy to survive,” she said. “Wisconsin Conservation Corps crews and Challenge Academy cadets assisted by cutting the stems back in the fall to cause resprouting this spring that the goats could access. The goats were already browsing resprouts in the training area blocks. Those locations were chosen because they had just been forestry mowed the winter of 2023-24 and resprouts would be the perfect height for browsing.”
In a previous news article about the goats starting their work at Fort McCoy in 2023, Wildlife Biologist Kevin Luepke with the NRB said the use of the goats also provides additional benefits.
“It will help us save labor/equipment time, reduce costs, reduce pesticide usage, and hopefully give us better results,” Luepke said. “The goats will be used in an integrated approach. I see our approach looking like this in the future — shred and mulch the invasive brush during the winter or fall, then allow the invasive brush to resprout the following growing season, introduce goats to the site during that same growing season to defoliate, and then treat with herbicides the following growing season after that.
“This will put a stressor on the invasive shrubs multiple times,” Luepke said. “In essence this will make the herbicide treatments more effective because we will be dealing with already stressed plants.”
Salesman said invasive species management is a long game, and it’s something the NRB team is will to do to achieve greater management success.
Goat grazing contractors working in the Upper Midwest usually recommend three browsings in two years and research conducted by Purdue University suggests as many as five years of annual treatments to see desired cover reductions,” Salesman said. “Some of that may depend on the species being targeted. It’s not a strategy for full control but one that makes it far easier and efficient for humans to follow-up on. And it dramatically reduces herbicide use.”
The use of goats is also being checked to see how well they have work in conjunction with training on post.
“We’ve been working closely with the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security Range Scheduling throughout this process,” Salesman said.
Luepke said previously that he hopes also in the long run this idea of using the goats will also provide them with the greatest of all time results.
“We knew we were losing ground on these invasive shrubs,” Luepke said. “So, this is going to hopefully allow us to get ahead of that curve, … allowing us another opportunity to put stressors on these plants. … Now we can integrate goats which will free up man hours for us to also work in other areas.”
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base.
| Date Taken: | 07.31.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.31.2025 18:16 |
| Story ID: | 544453 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 345 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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