OKLAHOMA CITY – Goats and sheep are proving useful for more than just providing meat and wool.
For a little over 10 years, the Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust has employed a herd of goats as groundskeepers of sorts at Lake Hefner in northwest Oklahoma City.
The animals graze on kudzu and other pesky, invasive plants that have taken over the sloped areas along the canal where water that’s released from Canton Lake in Blaine County and flows down the North Canadian River empties into Lake Hefner.
Goats are better than mowers at weed control on the canal. Maintenance workers were at risk for injury when operating mowing equipment along the canal slopes. Also, the animals don’t emit gasoline fumes and they eliminate the need for chemical herbicides.
The herd numbers “around 45 goats,” said Jasmine Morris, public information and marketing manager for the Oklahoma City Utilities Department. “A few” goats have been adopted “over the years,” she said, “in order to maintain genetic diversity in the herd per best agricultural practices.”
The animals can’t wander off because areas along the transport canal are fenced and gated, and city staff “checks on them daily,” Morris related. Overnight the critters stay in igloo-style shelters at Hefner, said Jennifer McClintock, public information officer for the Utilities Department.
During colder months the goats “overwinter on Trust property” near Lake Stanley Draper, Morris said. “They are sheltered during especially cold winter weather, but on mild days they go out to graze.”
A similar arrangement – described as “agrivoltaics” – is being practiced in Searcy, Arkansas.
Hundreds of acres of what used to be farmland are managed for Lightsource bp, a subsidiary of energy giant British Petroleum, by Chad Raines. He used to manage a row crop farm in Texas, but today he has hundreds of sheep that graze around a “farm” of solar panels; the animals prevent grass from growing too high and blocking the sun from generating electricity in the solar panels.
Agrivoltaics is “the art of raising crops of some kind, whether it’s livestock or row crops, mixed in with solar production,” Raines told the Louisiana Illuminator, an independent, nonpartisan news organization.