No kidding: Goats return to graze at Nose Hill Park

Park visitors can watch the goats munch from the pathways and are asked to keep their dogs on leash

Calgary’s favourite furry landscaping crew is back to work at Nose Hill Park. Starting Tuesday until July 30, roughly 600 goats will be grazing throughout fenced-off areas in the Rubbing Stone Hill natural parkland zone. The herd is a form of weed and pest control, mimicking historic grazers such as bison and elk.

They’ll be with us for the next three weeks to help graze down vegetation overgrowth, cycle those nutrients back into the landscape, and this will help us to reduce the fire fuel load on this side of the hill,” Andrew Phelps said, a parks ecologist for the City of Calgary. “It’ll also help us reduce the weedy and woody species encroachment into our native grasslands, and will open up new real estate for our native species to establish.” This is the fourth year that the herd has been put to work, though the amount of hectares covered may be reduced thanks to this year’s extensive rain and the earlier start.

In years past, the goats have made their debut in August or September. Jeannette Hall, owner and operator of Baah’d Plant Management and Reclamation and the herd’s shepherd, said the amount of greenery to munch on might limit the herd’s range. “This year it’ll be a little tough because we’re earlier, so we have more biomass, we have more vegetation that’s thriving in a healthy place, versus when we come later in the fall a lot of stuff has already gone dormant,” she said.

“So it might be a little bit smaller, but we’re still in the same area.” Phelps said the herd removes around 40 to 50 per cent of the vegetation in their pasture areas, working in harmony with other wildlife as part of the greater Nose Hill ecosystem. Certain areas of the park will be fenced off from visitors to ensure public safety, but Calgarians are welcome to enjoy the show from pathways.

Pets also must be leashed to protect the goats and herding dogs. Hall said she has six dogs on herd duty, some are used to guard the livestock from predators and others are used to direct the goats. Hall and her crew will be staying with the herd the entire time, camping on site to ensure the grazing goes smoothly.

She said the goats generally start between 8 and 9 a.m. and finish at sun down. She added that this herd is especially effective thanks to its longevity, as the Alberta government started this herd decades ago to study how goats impact weeds. This herd’s been together almost 30 years, and we’re a closed herd.

And what makes our herd so reliable when we come to our job sites and we know we’re going to eat the targeted plants, is that they’ve had so much exposure to so many weeds,” she said. “You could go into a lot of goat pastures and still find weeds there, and if they haven’t been trained or introduced to eating those, they just won’t.”

Hall has also bred the goats for this specific purpose, which she has named the “Alberta Goat.” “Over the years, I’ve just been breeding them for really good hardiness, that we’re strong and we can survive harsher conditions on these hills and on our job sites,” she said. “They’re used to traveling.

If you’ve got too big of udders, they get torn up in the bush. If you’re too meaty, they’re lazy and they don’t want to go work and go do it. And you want a good fiber on them as well, that they survive the winter.”

Phelps also noted that the program’s benefits extend beyond the landscape, as it helps the city get eyes on other environmental programs and efforts. “Goats bring in a lot of public attention, and so we use that to our advantage here by getting our parks ambassadors out in front of folks to educate them on the grazing program and other conservation initiatives that we have, and that helps promote ecological literacy,” Phelps said.” One educational tool the city is employing is goat trading cards, which provide facts about certain goats, like their name and personality traits, as well as educational facts about goats and targeted grazing.

Calgarians can check them out via the City of Calgary website or keep an eye out on the Calgary parks social pages for giveaways of the full set. Bookmark this website and support our journalism: Subscribe now so you don’t miss the Calgary news you need to know and sign up for our free newsletters .