Goats at Forest View Cemetery Round 2

Neighbors gathered on Memorial Day to watch Friends of Forest View Cemetery and RVA Goats released goats into the overgrown cemetery located at 4909 Bassett Avenue.

Somewhere beneath that Southern Jungle is a cemetery.

Councilperson Kristen Larson (left) was on hand and is working with Friends of Forest View Cemetery to revitalize the park. Efforts to find the current owner of the parcel have failed and years of back taxes are owed on the site.

The goats and a couple sheep for good measure will be working over the next two weeks to make a dent in the vegetation covering the cemetery.

Besides being overgrown the site has been used as a dumping ground for years.

The fence will keep the goats in and in theory the local coyotes out.

Not a goat.

Although this one isn’t eating it in this picture a favorite snack of goats is poison ivy and they’ll tend to eat that first.

Some goat facts from Eco-Goats:

• Goats love broad leafed material, which means brush and invading field vegetation are consumed. But they don’t prefer grass, so it is left to flourish.
• Goats are agile and light on their feet, so they can be gentler than machinery when working on historical sites and other areas that need special consideration.
• Goats will graze all day, going through very dense material at about a quarter acre per day per 30 goats (this can vary widely, depend on many factors including density, location and vegetation species).
• Goats have a narrow, triangular mouth that allows them to crush what they eat, so seeds that might otherwise get passed through to fertilization are not viable. This is a true advantage, since machine cutting only encourages further growth in the next growth cycle.
• Goats have special enzymes in their guts that allow them to eat plants that are poisonous to other animals.

Any questions/concerns about the goats? Check out this handy flyer from RVA Goats.

Previous Post on Forest View Cemetery:

• Long ignored local cemetery looking for some help and it starts with goats.
• The goats want to come back to help clean-up forgotten cemetery
• Forest View Cemetery goats