The Chew Crew: Colleges use goats to weed out invasive species

Daniel Funke | University of Georgia

It started as just another internship. But when Ally Hellenga met the goats for the first time, she knew there was nothing ordinary about it.

“I originally got into this internship and thought I would be doing communications. Then it kind of turned out to be ‘Oh, also — goat herder,’” she says. “So now people think I own goats and they think I’m kind of crazy.”

Hellenga, a junior studying public relations at the University of Georgia (UGA), has spent the past semester working with the Office of Sustainability on one of its most talked-about projects: the “Chew Crew.” A group of approximately 40 goats make up the Chew Crew, tasked with getting rid of invasive species growing around urban streams on UGA’s campus.

“Instead of having tools and machines come and cut down, the goats are doing what they do best -- and that’s just eating,” she says.

UGA isn’t the only college to use farm animals to weed out pesky plants such as English ivy and Kudzu.

After seeing the success of the Chew Crew at UGA, Clemson University researchers began exploring the possibility of using goats to recover some of the more overgrown areas of campus. Their plan came to fruition last fall, when a group of approximately 15 goats grazed on invasive plants, such as Kudzu, for eight weeks.

For Cal Sawyer, associate director for watershed excellence at Clemson, the decision to use goats on campus simply made sense.

“We’ve got this great stream resource, but it’s hidden behind so much invasive vegetation that it was not really daylighted (sic) — students would walk right by it, not even recognizing or realizing that it was there,” Sawyer says. “We had resources that were being expanded to control these species, and so goats became a viable option.”

Since maintaining steep inclines and other hard-to-reach areas of campus can be expensive when using herbicides and physical labor, Sawyer says it didn’t take long to get university administration on board with the project.

“It was a cheap way to try and reclaim some area without the expense of the manpower and the chemicals and stuff like that,” says Tommy Fallaw, director of landscape services at Clemson. “I was pretty amazed.”

From grants to goats

Kevin Kirsche, director of the UGA Office of Sustainability, says the Chew Crew was created in 2012 after graduate student Zach Richardson received a grant to research the potential for using goats as a method of campus maintenance.

“Zach had this wild idea of bringing goats to the heart of campus to help control exotic and invasive plants,” he says.

After the program started, Kirsche found using goats to restore on-campus streams and limit the growth of invasive plants proved not only cost-effective, but also environmentally preferable.

“The goats are going into areas that are relatively unmanaged currently,” he says. “They offer an environmentally responsible method for removing those invasive plants without disturbing the soil and without the use of herbicides that could have an impact on water quality downstream.”

Since several on-campus streams empty into the North Oconee River — the main source of drinking water in Athens, Ga.— Hellenga says it is important to restore them using eco-friendly stream restoration methods such as the goats in order to prevent further pollution of local watersheds.

“I think it is important for people to know about their watersheds,” Hellenga says. “It’s an attempt for an eventual stream restoration project because we hope, in the future once the goats clear the invasive and we’re able to replant native species, that students can once again enjoy the spring and use it for recreation. That’s what they used to do with it, and now it’s just gross.”

The people behind the animals

Briana Murphy had never been satisfied with any of her jobs. That is, until she started her own goat-raising business four years ago.

“With goats and sustainability, it’s really trying to incorporate farming back into the urban landscape and start making those animals more of a staple of our land care maintenance routine,” Murphy says. “We’re just kind of slowly expanding the business and growing it up so that it can be sustainable.”

At Oregon State University (OSU), she regularly brings her goats to campus and lets them feed on pockets of invasive plants that have come to dominate many of the natural areas there. Murphy, who started her goat business after reading a book about viable farming practices, says the animals provide an environmentally friendly way to cut down on invasive plant species in places that people often forget about.

“A lot of times you get these cities and all of the flat, buildable or tillable or sellable land that you can actually put something on -- that you want to maintain -- is usually flat,” she says. “So the area that you don’t have as much access … I think those areas, if they’re not buildable, people kind of have the tendency to ignore them until they become a big problem.”

Murphy plans to expand her goat herd to 60 this year as her list of clients — which includes Portland International Airport and OSU in addition to several soil and water conservation districts — quickly grows.

“This is something farmers have known for a really long time, so I think it’s just about that information leaking back into mainstream thought processes,” Murphy says.

At UGA, Hellenga says more than 150 volunteers, including students from a wide variety of degree programs, university staff and Athens residents, worked with the Chew Crew over the past year. As the goats can often be seen grazing at several popular spots on campus, Kirsche said the program is a good way to teach the community about sustainability.

“They’re a great way to engage the students in the local community,” he says. “Students don’t want to come out and engage with a Bobcat or a spray crew, but the goats really are great ambassadors for our culture of sustainability that we’re working to create. And they draw a crowd.”

And for people like Murphy, that’s good news.

“It’s a common sense Renaissance,” she said. “People are finally starting to understand something that cultures have known for hundreds and hundreds of years — that goats are good at eating stuff that nothing else will eat.”



Daniel Funke is a student at the University of Georgia and a former USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This article comes from The USA TODAY College Contributor network. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of USA TODAY. You understand that we have no obligation to monitor any discussion forums, blogs, photo- or video-sharing pages, or other areas of the Site through which users can supply information or material. However, we reserve the right at all times, in our sole discretion, to screen content submitted by users and to edit, move, delete, and/or refuse to accept any content that in our judgment violates these Terms of Service or is otherwise unacceptable or inappropriate, whether for legal or other reasons.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.