Georgia town chooses goats over chemicals.
When Peachtree City learned killing kudzu with chemicals and manpower might cost $387,000 a year, officials considered farming the job out — to goats.
"They're tearing the stuff up," said Mayor Steve Brown, who did Internet research on kudzu-gobbling animals.
City Council members joked about it at a recent retreat, then weighed the cost of goats against conventional cutting and spraying.
"All of a sudden the goats started looking pretty good," Brown said.
An estimated 40 acres of Peachtree City's green space, or about 0.5 percent of its total acreage, is infested with kudzu — the dogged weed that makes its unwelcome comeback this time of year.
Kudzu, sometimes called "the vine that ate the South," grows a foot a day when the weather's warm, so it doesn't take long to smother thousands of acres. Trees encased in kudzu die from lack of light, and native species are crowded out.
Goats, luckily, love kudzu, gobbling it up "just like ice cream," said John Jenkins, a tax preparer in Tyrone who has raised goats for 14 years.
Using goats to conquer kudzu isn't a radical concept.
In 1989, a University of Georgia agronomist suggested siccing 200,000 goats on the state's thousands of kudzu-covered acres. The idea didn't flourish.
For years, individual property owners have used goats to get rid of kudzu, but this appears to be the first time a Georgia city has seriously considered the method.
Will it work?
North Carolina State University says yes. Two years ago, the university started using goats to clear part of its campus.
The goats are corralled behind solar-powered electric fences and munch for a day or two until a kudzu patch looks like a freshly cut lawn. Then they're rotated to other areas. Several weeks later, the goats return to where they started and consume any new growth. Repeated grazing supposedly kills the plant, which isn't easy, because its roots can extend 15 feet.
Tallahassee embarked on a similar livestock campaign six years ago, on a much larger scale.
The Florida capital contracted with a New England company — at $150,000 a year — and launched a blitzkrieg of hair sheep, short-haired animals that resemble goats.
About 1,000 sheep were turned loose on fields of kudzu. A 60-animal unit dubbed Sheep With a Task — S.W.A.T. — targeted smaller areas.
Now, about 800 acres are kudzu-free, said Larry Schenk, Tallahassee's parks superinten- dent.
Not everyone is flocking to goats.
"It's probably one of the most ridiculous concepts ever devised," said Mark Thomas, a forester and wildlife biologist in Alabama who uses chemicals to kill nonnative plants. "It's because of this politically correct age we live in. The goats can't get to the root of the problem."
Even Dick Henry, owner of Bellwether Solutions in New Hampshire, which is leasing the sheep to Tallahassee, said livestock won't kill all kudzu because some plants are just too entrenched.
And goats don't know an undesirable privet from a valuable pin oak. They'll eat anything.
"They don't eat their own legs only because they need them," remarked Peachtree City landscaper Harvey Garcia.
Nonetheless, Peachtree City's public works director, Tom Corbett, has his marching orders: Find out about goats.
Brown said he wasn't sure how much all of this would cost, but he thinks it would be significantly less than using chemicals. He wants a proposal ready for bid this summer.
On a recent afternoon, Corbett stood in a gully where kudzu that looked dead a few months ago was springing back to life.
Until the 1950s, kudzu growth was encouraged to control erosion, feed livestock and shade porches.
Now its pervasiveness and resilience have got Corbett thinking deep, dark thoughts.
"There is, of course, napalm and a Chinook helicopter," he said of the task ahead.
And then again, there might be goats.