Poison Ivy Eating Goats are a Thing In New York
Over the weekend my wife and I did a lot of yard work. We have about five acres and about half of it is wooded with a lot of poison ivy.
I jokingly said we should get some goats to eat all this. My wife replied, you know goats eat poison ivy right? I had no clue that they weren't allergic to poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. Not only are they not allergic to it...they freakin' love to eat it.
A few farms out there will rent a small herd of goats to come to your property and basically eat all the invasive weeds you want. They will bring them to your property, build a temporary fence to keep the goats in the area you want to be cleared, and then set them loose to gobble up all the poison ivy and other weeds.
This might sound crazy, but one local farm in Rhinebeck has what they call "Green Goats" that have traveled up poison ivy and other invasive weeds all over the country. They were even called on to clear weeds and ivy from Civil War Gun Battery at Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island back in 2007 when the National Parks Service realized that the ivy was damaging the remains of the gun battery. According to the Green Goats website they are still used at Fort Wadsworth today. The goats have been all over New York City parks eating ivy, weeds, and grass....they are known as "Weapons of Grass Destruction".