BLACKBERRY PEST

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 August 1934, Page 10

BLACKBERRY PEST

GOATS THE BEST DESTROYER Some years ago the authorities offered a substantial bonus for the production of some preparation that would destroy blackberry. Several persons claimed it, but nobody received it. Any preparation, to win Government bonus, has to be 100 per cent, effective, and apparently none was put forward reaching that standard. Experience, however, has shown that the goat is doing the job of blackberry control quite effectively. The Napier “Daily Telegraph” mentions the case of one prominent Hawke’s Bay grazier who claims that the annual saving in the costs of blackberry control on his property since goals were introduced amounts to £5OO. For many years, before the introduction of goats for blackberry control on his property, this farmer was paying out an average of £lO a week in labour costs for cutting and burning the weed —and it cost hiin'this'amoiint for a losing light, for, as in other parts of Hawke's Bay back-country, where the weed has a hold, it appeared to thrive on such treatment.

Since he purchased goats, however, he has been spared the necessity for employing this extra labour, since the blackberry is kept grazed down under perfect control by the active goats, who disdaining the limitations imposed by mere fences, confine their whole attentions to that portion of the property upon which the blackberry has obtained a hold. They will not completely destroy the blackberry. but they will confine it within definite limits. ami keep it grazed down in small clumps, of such a nature that there is little cr no danger of sheep being caught up. it is the long runners thrown out by the blackberry plant that do all the damage so far as catching in the wool of sheep is concerned, and it is to the destruction of these runners that the goats give'first attention.

One minor difficulty with goats is to con tine them to a. property when there is blackberry on other properties. ‘ In a blackberry-infested area, where orily’one farmer keeps goats, he might find considerable difficulty in holding them to his own property, for they wander at will wherever there is blackberry to be consumed.

Another point in this methotl of blackberry control, is that herds of goats take .sdmg Time to build up. “Straggler” spent a few days some time ago on the back-country, of Southern Marlborough,"and goats were to be seen in their hundreds. A successful muster there would provide “goats to burn,” although the writer confesses that he does not know just how these precipice-climbing little animals could be mustered. The Railway Department might consider the wisdom of putting some of them on the railway reserves oil the West Coast. Travellers by rail would gamble that the goats would not be too slow to get cut of the way. of the train —on the .Coast. —“Nel son Mai 1.”