KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways.

Western Michigan University is reaching way back to the state’s pastoral past, giving goats a tryout removing damaging invasive plant species from some of the woodlots on the school’s Kalamazoo campus.

Rather than send in expensive manpower with heavy equipment, they want to see if the goats can do the job less expensively and in a more environmentally-friendly way. The goal of the eating machines will be to remove buckthorn, honeysuckle, oriental bittersweet and poison ivy from the less-traveled portions of campus.

Horticulturalist Nick Gooch said their advantage is that they work on slopes, won’t destroy beneficial plants or compact the soil and leave fertilizer behind.

Munchers on Hooves from Coldwater won the contract. They will get a week to show what they can do, beginning Sunday.