ANR advisors in action
Goats can help with yellow starthistle control
Interview with UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor Roger Ingram.
Transcript of the video:
Goats can be a great control agent for yellow starthistle. And the reason why is that goats will eat yellow starthistle at all stages of growth. So they’ll eat it when it is at the rosette stage. They’ll eat it when it sends up its central stalk and also eat it when it’s got those spines on there, so they can keep that grazing pressure on there all the time.
They would prefer eating a broad leaf plant over a grass plant. In some cases, yellow starthistle, we might classify as like a forb, for example. There are several different kinds of forbs that are broad-leafed in your pasture. They also go after brush. We’ve turned goats out where there was irrigated pasture, dry grass and there were also blackberries. What they did, they all went after the blackberries first, so they prefer browse plants before they will actually eat grass plants.