Haverford College Now Paying Goats to Mow The Lawn
If any area college was going to hire goats instead of pesticides and weedwhackers, it was going to be Haverford, right?
A Maryland-based service called Eco-Goats arrived on campus last Monday, charged with task of clearing a 1.4-acre swath opposite the duck pond, where vines and invasive species have ruled. Instead of chemicals and gas-guzzling machinery, Eco-Goats brought 28 four-legged weed eaters.
Haverford decided to…you know what? I’m going to just keep quoting from this article, which is wildly entertaining mainly for its juxtaposition of the word “goat” with the words “cost” and “benefit.”
Eco-Goats charges fees of about $400 per day, which Knox said is “competitive with landscapers in urban areas.” With heavy machinery costing $2,500-$3,000 per day, Astifan said the goats “are cost effective in terms of overall benefit.”
Though the Eco-Goats (no relation to the Acro-Cats) may be hard to book for a repeat job–they don’t like traveling very far in their trailers–Haverford could take a page out of Google’s book and hire them as more permanent campus grazers.
Over on the West Coast, however, companies like Google have enlisted goat herds to trim lawns in Mountain View, Calif., and Seattle City Light has used them for vegetation management around substations.
