Google Mows With Goats 466
Kelson writes "Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. 'It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers,' wrote Dan Hoffman."
Here we go! (Score:2, Insightful)
Que obligitory Goatse.cx joke in 3... 2... 1...
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, please don't start that. All that stuff is just baaaaaaad.
Alright. Sorry for the stupid joke. I'm feeling a bit sheepish now.
Okay. Seriously. I'm done ramming these jokes down your throat.
What? Don't be angry. You're just mad I got this in before ewe.
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
These jokes really get my goat.
Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Funny)
There's no pulling the wool over your eyes!
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
We're just going to keep milking this one, aren't we?
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Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Funny)
Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever (Score:4, Funny)
MORE Outsourcing!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Excuse Me But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
But, they taste better than lawnmowers...
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
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Could you milk me?
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Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
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I did once, when I was a child.
Milked straight to a cup, then drank it warm.
Delicious!
Did the same with a cow some years later.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
Still less CO2 than mowers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or brush fires.
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I'm curious where you think the CO2 released in brush fires comes from.
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I'm curious where you think the CO2 released in brush fires comes from.
Yeah, the most carbon neutral thing google could do with that land would be to burn it.
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Yeah but there are other benefits aside from the obvious jokes about Goatse-eing:
1. Milk
2. Meat: tasty, tasty murder.
3. Less fossil fuel burning.
*shrug*, it's hip to be green.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but they use quite a bit of carbon making more goat mass. What do you think goats are made of?
They just need to sequester the goats in a salt mine or something once they reach a certain size.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
Goats are made of food, just like cows, chickens, sheep, and pigs :)
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same as the trucks that transport the lawnmowers to the field.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
No, you use cows to carry the goats to the field, and you get Gorillas to herd the cattle, then winter comes and the Gorillas freeze to death.
Circle of life.
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And google should be getting paid to feed thew goats, not the other way around.
Wait, the goats are getting paid to feed google? I knew there was a goatburger subplot in there somewhere!
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me but, don't goats emit carbon in the form of CO2 just by breathing - and methane by farting?
All of the carbon they emit is initially gained through eating grass. If you mow with a powered machine, all of the grass's carbon will end up back in the atmosphere through decay, and you also free carbon that was trapped in liquid form (oil) to the atmosphere. The goats are carbon neutral.
That said, I'm surprised it worked. I once got a goat to eat the grass on a hill I needed mowed, but it refused to eat the grass. It preferred pieces of metal and fence posts to grass. What it really wanted was its expensive goat chow, though. Maybe we spoiled him.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Informative)
Goats are browsers, not grazers. They'll eat grass, but typically prefer only the tender bits. That said, hunger works charmingly -- if you'd held out on the kibble for a couple days, it probably would have started on the grass.
If you really want to use ruminants to mow for you, sheep are a much better choice than goats. Though more annoying to deal with, IMO.
Re:A goat can be used as a browser? (Score:3, Funny)
Goats are browsers
So I can use goat in place of a flaming fox to view webpages?
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:4, Funny)
If you really want to use ruminants to mow for you, sheep are a much better choice than goats.
Agreed, and then there's the associated pleasures that come with sheep, if ya know what I mean :-). Not that goats are bad, but it's a different stuff all together, though that also depends on your local climate, I guess...
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
I *do* know what you mean!
Goat hair (mohair) is terrible for making sweaters from unless you use a breed specifically bred for the purpose, and those breeds are even worse for mowing than the meat or dairy breeds.
I'm so glad there is someone else on slashdot who understands the advantages of sheep over goats. You've really made my day.
[rolls eyes]
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Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Informative)
Are you under the impression that the goats would have otherwise not breathed and farted** if they hadn't been used to trim the lawn? I assume they're being used for milk and/or hair in addition to grazing services; it'd be a waste not to. Or they could be males left over from breeding for milk-producing goats.
** -- Ruminant methane emissions are primarily through "belching" rather than flatus. Belching in quotes, as that's not exactly what happens; they transfer the bolus (cud) back and forth between the mouth and rumen. It is in the rumen that this methane is primarily produced, and it gets released in the mouth. Most of the remaining emissions come mainly from the decomposion of the manure. Flatus is only a small portion of their total methane emissions.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Funny)
I learned something today !
My plan to make a cow-dragon is now one step closer to reality.
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:5, Informative)
Stupid shit like this makes me homicidal. Do you really think that the ~.9kg of CO2 a goat exhales per day is going to cause an eco-catastrophe? Contrast that to the gas and energy that go into an industrial lawnmower, and there is no comparison.
Goats create CO2 as a waste product from their O2 burning lifestyles...Just like us. Where does that C come from? Goats may eat a chunk of coal every now and again, but that's not really their primary source of carbon. They get their carbon from plant matter. They eat it, digest it, and crap most of it out as fertilizer.
That's what they call "carbon-neutral": they use "free" carbon, that isn't buried in the earth, and they produce fertilizer that increases the growth of other carbon-absorbing plants.
As for methane, who gives a shit? It's got a short shelf-life. Methane drops out of the atmosphere in a mere decade, as opposed to C02, which can hang around forever.
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Did I say that? I don't think I did. The parent was talking about CO2, so I talked about CO2. A facile statement like, "Oh noes, teh goats are going to breath us to death" deserves ridicule.
I frankly don't have a anthropogenic climate change position; I don't think it's been discredited, and I don't think it's been proven. But if you're talking about CO2 production from a goat, vs CO2 production from an internal combustion engine, you're not making an apples to apples comparison. It's intellectually dishone
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They would either way, eating straw or other stuff, so why not make them do something good as long as they don't do anything besides farting and breathing?
Re:Excuse Me But... (Score:4, Informative)
Side Effects? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google employees no longer have to worry about tall grass during fire drills!
...now, they have to worry about goat shit.
Re:Side Effects? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, a friend of ours has a housetrained pygmy goat (it works surprisingly well!). Its waste looks kind of like oversized rabbit pellets.
Re:Side Effects? (Score:5, Funny)
Want to know something totally fucked up? Rabbits have a simple two chamber ruminant stomach so they cannot digest cellulose in one pass. hey are forced to re-eat their shit in order to fully digest it. They are copraphages or literally shit eaters. Much like Microsoft employees forced to use their own software.
Re:Side Effects? (Score:5, Funny)
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I got that fact in a biology class filled with hot young coeds with whom I tried to practice applied biology. Also I currently live in the Gulf and there are no basements in the country that I can detect.
Low carbon foot print? (Score:5, Interesting)
Methane is a much stronger green house gas than CO2.
On the plus side they will also "fertilize" the grass at the same time.
The real "green" thing to do is get rid of the grass and use native plants and grasses for the landscape. That would also cut down on water use.
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Fire hazards (Score:5, Funny)
...Native plants still produce a fire hazards ...
Fire hazards are part of nature though. If your home or office building isn't burned down in a lightning-caused brush fire every 10 years or so, you're not doing your part for the environment. Why do you people all hate the Earth so much?
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Last year, we lost about half of our lawn to grubs (and skunks digging for grubs), and reseeded with thyme. Requires virtually no watering at all, and doesn't grow higher than ankle height, so doesn't need to be cut. It also smells better, and is a lot more comfortable on bare feet if you choose to walk around barefooted... About the only down side is that following the spring thaw, it stays brown for a little longer than grass (about 4 days longer this year), but that shouldn't be an issue at all for Calif
How were they transported? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just curious how they were transported back and forth (and how far)? I'm imagining the overall amount of fuel used would be less than using mowers, but there have been plenty of cases where good intentions didn't pay out in the end.
Re:How were they transported? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How were they transported? (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh. (Score:2)
I wonder if they allow the goats near to where the workers are. Male goats are some stinky animals (and sometimes very aggressive).
In reality, though, this is just a clever business mooove by Google. Pretty soon we're going to see targeted advertising in our fresh chevre.
wasting time... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:wasting time... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wasting time... (Score:5, Funny)
"and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers"
How much time do you spend watching lawn mowers or ..now.. goats ?
Aren't Google employees required to spend 10% of their time staring out the window?
Google evil (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey People emit methane too!
(So maybe we should outlaw beans!)
Re:Google evil (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, don't single out Google! When I worked at Yahoo! in 2006 I noticed they did the whole goat-mowing thing in the summer months as well. I imagine it's a fairly common practice here in the valley.
Sounds Like An Awesome Business Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight, not only does the owner of the goats get to feed them for free but Google will actually pay them for the right to eat their grass?
Where can I sign up?
Re:Sounds Like An Awesome Business Plan (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't look like they are hiring new goatherds, but they sure seem to need a web designer, so maybe you can volunteer and have them teach you something about goat-herding in exchange.
technical possiblities (Score:5, Funny)
Hiring only one herd seems very un-google like. Perhaps they should have hired a second herd for from a proper RAIG (redundant array of inexpensive goats) array. Scottish researchers have already proven technologies that could be used to form a common RAIG-1 array. Simple genetic manipulation with the common Equus quagga [wikipedia.org] would create a RAIG-10 (Stripped - Mirror) array.
I would say that a RAIG-5 array would offer the best performance, but I am wholly unaware of any current methods for calculating goat parity. I also have no desire to try and troubleshoot RAIG-Controller corruption...
"Cuter than lawnmowers"? (Score:5, Funny)
If they think goats are cuter than lawn mowers, then I think they're hiring the wrong people to mow their lawn...
They should have just put ads out: "Wanted: cute people to mow lawns." They could arrange to get some kids dressed up like they're out of a Rockwell painting, or some tasty co-ed types... I know these aren't the usual things one looks for in a lawn mower, but if you're taking goats as the aesthetically pleasing alternative then I have to think you can do better.
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Or they could just hire these people [msn.com].
Awesome business model (Score:2)
Regardless of any questions about carbon emission of goats themselves or the transport of goats to and from different work sites, this farmer has a sweet deal!
Feed for farm animals cost a stack of cash and this guy has turned what is normally an expense into a profit.
So he gets food from excess goat production, valuable goats milk, and profit from selling a slightly green-washed grass control method.
The guy's a frickin' genius.
Hardly counts as news here in CA (Score:3, Informative)
People have been using goats for vegetation control around these parts for many years--probably back to the Spanish colonial days.
First Pigeons Now Goats? (Score:2)
What are the illegal alien gardeners gonna do for work?
Seriously, my city uses goats asw ell. We loved watchign them crawl over the hillsides to clear the brush. In California, the rain falls from November-ish to April-ish. The open fields and hilsides gets 4-6 feet of grass and weeds. If they're not cleared, they becom fire hazards for the six months
And don't forget ... (Score:2)
Introductions (Score:2)
Larry (leans in): Why hello there, Thor! And aren't you just the cutest thing...
Thor: BAH! (headbutts Larry and storms off.)
News for Herds? (Score:5, Funny)
Nevermind the news. Google's grass is eaten by goats.
Silly Google... (Score:2)
you need to hire hot lawn girls instead of middle aged male migrant laborers.
Boulder, CO has been doing this for ~10 years (Score:5, Informative)
Benefits include reducing the amount of poisons (herbicides) used in sensitive areas. In addition the goats provide fertilizer and till the ground with their hooves,
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/jun/20/grazing-mowers-herd-of-goats-takes-on-the-rez/ [dailycamera.com]
"Cute" my ass (Score:5, Funny)
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This use of goats may be fine (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a fairly hight correlation between the introduction of mass goat-herding in an area, and the encroachment of desert 100 years later.
Goats can do what mowers can't (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of places in the Bay Area that do this. It's much more than a sop to carbon neutrality: the goats can "mow" slopes that are far too steep and uneven to wrestle a mower across. They also make short work of areas that are filled with rocks, brush and stumps and have no objection to a dessert course of poison oak (that's a good reason not to pat them on the head, though).
I used to watch them arrive at the Lawrence Hall of Science up in the Berkeley hills. Trailers pull up; the goat wranglers set out a low fence and then unload the goats and a few working dogs. Over the next few days the wranglers move the fenced area across the slope and the goats eat and fertilize their way across the landscape. A few days after they arrive the brush is gone and some very nasty terrain has become a fire break, with roots still in place to prevent land slides. What's not to love?
Mow it with lasers! (Score:4, Funny)
I've always thought it would be cool to have a sprinkler-like system of laser beams mow the grass once a day.
Downsides:
1) Lawn must be perfectly flat
2) Safety precautions needed
3) Possible fires
But still. Lasers, eh?
Tax Dodge (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes a big part of their land agricultural (lower tax rate) rather than commercial. Not to mention the Federal Mohair subsidy.
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Wow. That might actually be worse than a GNAA troll first post.
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Wow what an amazing feat of Photoshopping.
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Goats produce much less CO2 than cows. Yes, I've looked into this; we donate to Heifer International [heifer.org] but I only donate goats (not cows) for this reason.
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Well, take into account that the goats exist for more then just to eat grass. As in, if you mow with a lawn mower, you burned gasoline to power them and that is it, but goats give goats milk/meat and even perhaps help reduce US dependence on foreign oil because google is using less gas.
Re:Robomow (Score:5, Informative)
mow-boys (Score:5, Informative)
They clearly haven't seen the guys who mow the lawn for one of my neighbors.
Re:mow-boys (Score:4, Funny)
That's weird -- your sig implies that you are not a Mac user...