Goats and Sheep: A Weapon Against Weeds Webinar

FREE

 Thursday, July 22, 2010,  12:00 pm

 Invasive species cause environmental damages and losses of up to $120 billion per year nationally. Invasive species crowd out native woodland plants and animals, robbing native wildlife species of crucial food and cover sources. Climbing species can also strangle trees and bring down limbs. What can you do to stem the invasion on your land?

Machines often can't get to problem areas, manual removal is very labor intensive, and herbicides can inflict collateral damage water, plant, and animal resources.

Targeted grazing with goats and sheep can be a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly method of controlling invasive species on your property. Goats and sheep graze in places that mowers can't reach and humans don't want to go, including thickets of both brambles and poison ivy.

Goats eat a wide range of unwanted vegetation, which on the East Cost includes kudzu, Oriental bittersweet, Tree of Heaven, multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, mile-a-minute, and more.

 Sheep prefer grasses and forbs. Livestock will graze all day, going through very dense material at about a quarter acre per day per 30 animals. They respect electric fences, making this an easy and effective source of mobile containment.

This webinar is your chance to learn from extension specialists and professionals in the field how to implement this practice on your land. The webinar is free and will be held on July 22 at noon. Contact Carol Taylor to register (carolt@umd.edu<mailto:carolt@umd.edu> or 410-827-8056, ext. 135). A recording will be available at http://www.naturalresources.umd.edu soon after the live presentation.

 Presenters will include Nevin Dawson, Forest Stewardship Educator, and Susan Schoenian, Sheep & Goat Specialist, with University of Maryland Extension; and Brian Knox, President of Sustainable Resource Management, Inc. and supervising forester for Eco-Goats.