[upbeat folk music]
[gentle acoustic music]
- Inga: After meeting with Diana and her dairy goats,
I took a ride up a steep ridge with Jesse.
Jesse and Jay are a husband and wife team of ecologists
who manage several herds of goats.
- Come on goats, let's see some goats.
- Inga: They put their goats to work
clearing brush and controlling invasive species
as they preserve and rehabilitate natural areas.
[goat bleats]
This is so spectacular to see these views
and be up on this ridge.
Can you tell folks where exactly we are?
- Yeah, this the Hogback State Natural Area.
We're in central Crawford County,
which is the heart of the Driftless Area.
We're actually on a ridge
which used to be part of the Kickapoo River Valley,
but tens of thousands of years ago,
the river cut through the bluff about a mile to the south of us
and left this part of the river valley dry,
so we have this spectacular view
of this huge river valley with no river in it.
The Hogback itself is one of the finest examples
of dry prairie left in the state.
- Inga: So what I'm looking at here,
this is all native to Wisconsin?
All these plants?
- It's a mixture of the native prairie plants
that have been here for millennia,
and then things that have been brought in
since Euro-settlement,
so we have all of the common invasive species.
One of the main reasons the goats are here
in all this shrubbery behind us is exotic bush honeysuckle.
It was brought in as an ornamental.
'Til a few years ago, you could buy it at every garden store.
And the birds poop it out, then it's everywhere,
and become a very, very serious issue.
Prior to using goats, we used chainsaws and herbicide,
and fire.
Many of the sites are too rugged to use machinery
and so, really, your only option is hand labor.
This site, for instance, prescribed fire
just won't carry through this brush layer.
We're using grazers as a surrogate for fire.
This area would've burned nearly annually,
so once a year, there would have been a great disturbance.
Wildfire, they came through
and it top-killed all of the brush
and let the prairie flourish,
and because this site has a federally endangered butterfly,
there's some apprehension to burning too much.
- What is that butterfly? - Jesse: The regal fritillary.
- Inga: Oh, that's a mouthful.
- Jesse: Yeah, it's only known from just a few places on earth.
- Inga: Really?
- Jesse: Very rare, federally endangered butterfly.
Goaty goats!
T-1000.
- Can I pet you?
Will you let me pet you?
Get some scratches up here.
Come here, sweetie, look at this.
- So, do you consider yourself to be a farmer?
- Yeah, absolutely.
When we first got goats, we bought a dozen
to see if we could use them to manage natural areas
because that's what our business had done for over a decade,
but now that we have hundreds of goats,
I'm very much a farmer.
- So, do you like goats, you like working with them?
I've always had cows, which I think are the most docile,
easiest things to work with.
- Over the last 20 years,
we had employees for most of this time,
and goats are, to some degree, easier to manage.
[both laughing]
- I wish I could teach 'em how to milk cows.
My whole dairy farm career, people have been saying,
"You should get goats instead of cows
because they're so much easier to work with."
And I think, boy,
if my cows are out of their fences all the time,
I don't think I could manage fencing for goats
'cause they're climbing everywhere and everything.
- We have cows on our own farm, and I would have to say
that raising cattle's easier than raising goats.
- Yeah, but the goats are so much friendly,
or they have this appeal that is just so lovely.
- They have a personality, they seem to think quicker,
and they seem to be more social. - Right.
- They're more like a dog.
[goats bleating]
- My cows will come up to me in the pasture
as long as I have a little treat for 'em,
and then they'll make me scratch 'em forever.
But if I'm out of treats, they're just like, "Forget it."
- Yeah, we have goats that you can call individually,
and some of my best friends are goats.
[both laughing] - Well, thank you so much.
This was just such an inspiration.
- Well, thanks for coming out.
[upbeat folk music]