Grazing on weeds: Goats brought to Edmonton parks as herbicide alternative

Meet and bleat with goats Edmontonians got to meet the goats eating weeds at Rundle Park Saturday. CTV Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg reports.

A little taste of farm life has descended on Edmonton as nearly 400 goats have been hired to help out with weed removal in the city’s parks.

On Saturday, the herd was tasked with chowing down on leafy spurge, an invasive weed species with several yellow flowers in a bunch, at Rundle Park in Edmonton’s east end.

“This whole park was yellow,” Jeannette Hall, known as the “shepherd” at Baah’d Plant Management and Reclamation, told CTV Edmonton. “This is a testament to how great they're doing because you can come in here and it’s very hard to even tell.”

In 2015, Edmonton city council banned the use of herbicides in the majority of public parks. The “GoatWorks!” pilot project began in 2017 as a way of combatting weed growth without the use of potentially harmful chemicals.

“The fact that we give an environmentally conscious alternative to the use of herbicides, I think that is really something amazing that is about this project,” said Joy Lakhan, goat coordinator with the City of Edmonton.

The city says goats are the perfect animals for the job as they can handle all types of terrain and have a special digestive track that can reduce germination in some plants. That insatiable appetite doesn’t hurt, either.

“Each goat can eat up to 10 pounds of weeds in a day, probably more,” said Hall.

At a young age, the goats are trained to target key species of weeds that can be harmful to other plants and animals. Enzymes in their body can break down parts of plants that could irritate other livestock.

“You have to make sure that they are reliably going to eat the weeds, otherwise you've wasted a lot of time and effort getting them to a site,” Hall said.

The goats are scheduled to remain at Rundle Park for another week and will return twice more this year.

Olds College, an agriculture school in Olds, Alta., is working to measure the program’s effectiveness.

With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg