1060 CYCLOPEDIA OF LIVE STOCK AND raMPT^ETE STOCK DOCTOR. 



XXVIII. An Assistant to the Farmer. 



Like the honey-bee, the Angora goat works for his owner and boards 

 himself. He will eat what the other members of the farm animals 

 spurn. At the same time he will do as much as a gang of men toward 

 clearing the farm of bnish and weeds. In this respect a herd of goats 

 is of especial value to farmers living on the cut-over lands in the tim- 

 bered regions of this country. These cut-over lands have grown up with 

 brush which is often about as difficult to clear as the original timber. 

 Goats eat the leaves and small twigs, and the brush, thus deprived of 

 its breathing apparatus, dies, root and branch. The best time for goating 



AMERICAN MILK flOAT. 



a field of brush is in early summer, when the sun is hot. It does not 

 take long to reduce a field of vigorous second growth to the condition 

 of bare and dry whip stalks. When the goat cannot get leaves he takes 

 the bark of small saplings; in this way he does the work of the ax. It 

 is best in goating a field to cut all small saplings, that the goats may get 

 at the branches. You may depend on him to keep down all sprouts. 

 Dr. Santley, of Iowa, who has had much experience with Angoras as 

 land clearers, says : "Land can be cleared of the worst brush known in this 

 country for a little less than nothing by employing Angora goats. They 

 will pay you a profit and live on leaves and weeds, leaving the land 

 cleaner than you oan get it by any other process. At the present 



