No kidding: How goats are helping the bosque recover after fires

Kids are contract workers with the city of Albuquerque Parks and Recreation Department.

No, not those types of kids. On Tuesday morning, approximately 200 goats, and a handful of sheep, were released into the bosque, their hooves rapping like rain on a rooftop.

They followed their owner, Max Wade, who ran ahead, carrying a blue bucket. It’s a decoy, he said, filled with just sticks and bark. But the sound of a bucket alone — and the promise of feed that comes with it — is enough to bring the herd into a stampede.

The goats had an important job to do. The area, near the Pueblo Montaño trail, is recovering from a fire in May 2022. Many of the trees in the area had their bark stripped, leaving them bone-white. The fire burned so hot that the soil was damaged, making it difficult for native flora to return.

But invasive plants love disturbed soil, said field biologist Joanna Strange, who works for the Open Space Division of the Parks and Recreation Department. Kochia, Russian olive trees and salt cedar — all invasive species — are thriving in the area. In fire season, “they’re fuel,” Strange said.

“If you have the actual native grasses, which are not the woody grasses, they burn at a much lower temperature,” Strange said. “It’s a much lower disturbance, and the recovery’s much faster.”

Luckily, invasive woody grasses are delicacies to goats. While it would take a team of volunteers six hours to clear a small patch of land in the bosque, it takes just a couple of hours for the goats, from Galloping Goat Grazing, to munch the brush.

Wade has about 300 goats at his ranch — Boer goats, Spanish goats, Nigerian dwarf goats and every mix in between. But for Wade, the best variety of goat is the “happy, hungry” type.

He and his wife once raised a much smaller herd, trotting them out at the Galloping Goat Pumpkin Patch. But in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic closed the patch, forcing the couple to look for additional streams of revenue.

They started renting out about 35 goats, rounded up by a loyal border collie named Cue, to graze on backyards. Now, the goats clear brush for clients like the cities of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho and the State Forestry Service, working six days a week.

“There’s enough need for it,” Wade said. “We could be going seven days a week and never catch up.”

Strange said the invasive plants will never be fully eradicated. But they can be managed.

Typically, Strange said, the dried brush in the bosque would have to be cleared by machinery or by hand. But machinery can be disruptive to the ecosystem and can’t reach all the nooks and crannies in the forest.

Goats, however, can get into those hard-to-reach areas.

Goats are equal opportunity grazers, Wade said as some nibbled on everything from the lowest weeds to the highest trees. Thorns on a Russian olive and spiky tumbleweeds are no problem for a goat mandible.

And the goat manure is good for the ground. Although the seeds they eat are thoroughly chewed and processed, meaning the invasive plants they eat won’t come back, their gut leaves behind good bacteria. Unlike cow manure, which can’t be immediately added to the soil, goat poop is a “cold manure,” which can be applied straight to the ground.

The goats stomp the fertilizer into the ground, an especially important service in burned areas with soil degradation.

“Beneficial on both ends,” Strange said.

Goats clearing the bosque