Goat landscaping crew is fired by Oregon city
There is breaking goat news out of Oregon: A 75-goat-strong crew assigned by the city of Salem to eat invasive species at a public park has been relieved of its duties.
The goats are accused of demanding too-high salaries, excreting too much bodily waste and not doing their job particularly well, according to the Statesman-Journal newspaper.
In a report presented to the Salem city council Monday, the paper reported, it was revealed that six weeks of goat rental last fall cost five times more than what traditional methods of clearing the 9.1-acre area — such as mowing or using weed-eaters — would have. The goat price was nearly $21,000; that included $2,560 for “goat monitoring” and $2,041 for a crew of prison inmates that cleared the blackberry bramble left behind by the goats, which ate only the leaves.
The goats were overzealous, devouring native plants and sampling tree bark. Mark Becktel, public works operations manager for the city of Salem, told the newspaper that they also left behind a “heavily fertilized area, if you know what I mean.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/02/26/goat-landscaping-crew-is-fired-by-oregon-city/?tid=sm_tw
