THE ANGORA GOAT. 31 



are used, you must fence off one-third of the land you desire cleared, so the goats can 

 not get to it. The proper time of the year to turn them loose on the brush is after 

 the spring rains have ceased, whish is usually about the 1st of June. By this time 

 the leaves will be well matured, and the goats immediately proceed to strip the brush 

 of its foliage, which leaves the stems and branches exposed to the hot sun, which 

 cooks them and kills the brush from its deepest roots to its topmost branches. The 

 hot sun being the most effective, and there being no rains to revive the sap, it makes 

 quick destruction of the brush. By the time that the goats will have the largest jior- 

 tiou of the land cleared it will be well along in August, and it will now be time to 

 turn them in on the piece of land fenced off at the start, which is fresh and abundant. 

 In connection with the brush feed allow them one ear of corn a day, and at the end 

 of six weeks they will have cleared the remainder of your brush land, and the corn 

 you have been feeding them will have them in prime condition to be thrown on the 

 market, where they will bring as much as, if not more than, you paid for them. The 

 result is that you have cleared your land, at most, at an actual cost of 50 cents an 

 acre, and besides that, your land is now ready to set in blue grass, which will enable 

 you to rent it to sheep growers at $2.50 per acre, thereby causing the idle land to 

 produce an income rather than a constant incumbrance of taxes, with no profit at all. 



An illustration of the value of Angora goats in clearing land is given 

 b}' Mr. Abe Blackburn, of North Yamhill, Oreg., who says that he 

 now has a pasture that will keep 200 sheep which did not have grass 

 enough to keep a goose when he turned his goats into it a few years 

 ago. The goats have killed out the brush, and the grass has taken its 

 place. 



The following quotations from others who have had experience with 

 goats as brush destroyers show how well the work is done, and, to 

 some extent, the character and kinds of brush eaten: 



When confined in small bushy pastures they have been profitable in clearing the 

 land. Some of the finest vineyard, lands in California have been cleared by goats. 

 A farmer in western Oregon, who has for several years run a small flock of goats in 

 a pasture with dairy cows, says the pasture now produces double the grass it did 

 before he purchased the goats. Lands formerly producing nothing but brush and 

 ferns are now covered with clover and bunch grass. A farmer in Iowa writes as 

 follows: "Their value as brush-land cleaners can hardly be estimated. To a person 

 who has never seen the results of the application of Angoras to brush lands, a ride 

 through my blue-grass pastures is a revelation. Where three years ago the ground 

 was densely covered with an undergrowth of hazel, crab tree, oak, blackberry, and 

 other brush, it is now growing the finest blue grass. At jsresent I have over 600 

 acres which have been reclaimed, and a conservative estimate would be that the 

 value of the land had thereby been enhanced at least $10 an acre." — C. P. Bailey, 

 iSan Jose, Col. 



Angora goats like a variety of food; they live jn-incipally on leaves and young and 

 tender barks and twigs of bushes and small trees, but, if necessity compels them, 

 they will also eat weeds and grasses, and for a time do well on them. The quality 

 of a goat pasture, therefore, depends upon the amount and variety of brush, especially 

 evergreens — as cedar, hemlock, live oak, holly, etc. — which it contains, for on these, 

 as well as the tender bark and twigs of all kinds of bushes, they live principally in 

 winter; and the more of it they find the less grain and hay do they require during 

 the cold spells. — O. A. Hoerle, Ridgewood, N. J. 



For clearing out thickets and imdergrowth of all kinds there is nothing better than 

 these goats. Their pasture will soon look as clear as a cleaned-up picnic ground as 



