Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Music) (Baby Goat: "Baaa!!!)
(Music)
We're out here along Santa Ana Canyon Road here in the City of Anaheim
and right adjacent to some homeowners' properties we have a city right of way
that the city of Public Works Department is out here and has
employed a herd of goats to clear some dead brush
and vegetation that's out here...it's been many many years in coming and there's
alot built up that
they need to get to work and have a good meal and clear out this brush
so we have today is about ninety to one hundred goats
these goats will take care of percentage-wise
about 10 percent of their body weight on this dry vegetation
they will be removing about a thousand pounds a half a ton per working day
So our goal here is to create a defensible space for
firefighters in case we do have a wild land fire
where embers are being blown miles downwind
that we don't get an ember that lands in the brush that could spread the fire to
the houses so
by creating a defensible space we eliminate the fuels
on the ground and we're therefore able to provide a much safer environment for the
homeowner as well as the firefighters
if they were tasked with fighting a wild land fire in this area
we stay with the goats 24/7, it's typical that an attendant will be
here
and also a hand crew. My dog Bear his purpose is to keep out
coyotes, mountain lions and bobcats in the open spaces
and then other feral dogs or other dogs that would come in to do harm
by him confronting these animals it keeps them outside of the pen
and they're not praying on this livestock so in turn the natural
ecosystem of prey they'll stay
preying on on their natural prey and it actually saves the lives
of these animals.
It's very economical to employ
goats to do this kind of work as opposed to machinery and if you'll see behind me
the slope sometimes
makes it hard to get machinery and hand crews in here which adds to the cost
of clearing the brush. It's a very green method, there's not
any kind of pollution going on all the goats are very clean and economical and
green
so it's very good for the city and it's good for the residents in the city as well.
A lot of people think that when you introduce goats that they're gonna
just go and transfer seeds. The opposite is true. Once the goats eat the mass the seed
heads
that seed is out of the equation the goats to do not transfer seeds
through their droppings so what comes out of a goat dropping probably is cleaner than
the clean grass seed you would buy from
a hardware store to re-seed your lawn.
We just want to urge our residents to go to our website
www.anaheim.net/fire and check our "Ready, Set, Go!" program
for tips on how they can create their own wild fire
defensible plan for their own selves.
(Baaaa!!!) They're born to do it! Let me show you they're literally born to do it!
(Music)
home