'Not a petting zoo': Goats brought in to munch on weeds near Calgary business

A herd of goats has been brought in to help remove noxious plants from property owned by Imperial Oil.

Calgary — The weed-eating goats are back in the city of Calgary, this time in Quarry Park.

Imperial Oil has hired a shepherd and his goats to help rid a hill of noxious weeds.

The company heard about the City of Calgary using goats to graze and eat the plants over the past couple of summers and thought hiring the goats would work perfectly for its campus.

"We enlisted the help of a shepherd and some goats because we have some noxious weeds on our campus, they are part of the Alberta controlled list," said John Harding, public and government affairs advisor at Imperial Oil.

"We are required to have them removed to prevent further spread."

The hill the goats are grazing on is quite steep with a body of water at the bottom, so it’s not ideal for machines or the use of chemicals that could permeate into the water. However, goats are the perfect option, according to Harding.

"We could do this manually but there are a lot of safety precautions we would have to implement and there is a water body so we can’t do any chemical removal."

The animals have been gaining many onlookers but as Robert Finck says, they are here to work and he is reminding people to steer clear of them.

"They are behind an electric fence, so we maintain distance so we don’t get shocked. We have to keep them in place where we want them," said Finck, the owner of Creekside Goat Company.

"They’re here to work, it’s not a petting zoo."

Harding says it has been cost effective and environmentally friendly and he expects the goats to be back at the Imperial Oil Quarry Park campus in the future.

The goats have been in Calgary all week and will continue to work through the day Thursday and into Friday.