Every few hours each day, just like clockwork, Ninny the goat and
Kona the dog start getting restless and tell Grace Bruinsma in no
uncertain terms that it’s time to go for their walk.
The pair have become inseparable and look forward to their walks on a
rural Aldergrove street with their companion Grace Bruinsma.
Over recent months they’ve become a bit of a sensation with passing
motorists, who often stop and take photos and videos of the trio
trotting along 24 Avenue.
Kona the dog is still a youngster and can be a bit of a brat and
escape artist, so Grace and husband Andrew keep him on a leash when he’s
not in his kennel. Ninny the goat, on the other hand, is eager to
follow Kona and Grace and sticks close to them during their walks
without any leash or harness to restrain her.
“It started about half a year ago when I took Kona out for his
exercise, Ninny started bawling that she wanted to come along with us,”
said Grace.
“I thought, why not? She sticks real close to us and listens to me
when I tell her to stop and make room for passing cars, and stands on
the shoulder or a driveway with us. And if I don’t take her she cries
non-stop in her paddock.”
“So many people get a kick out of it,” adds Andrew. “People stop, take photos, and ask Grace if she needs help.”
The couple are hoping that Kona will grow out of his predilection for
running away to the neighbours so that he doesn’t have to spend the
rest of his life in his kennel. But in the meantime he needs his daily
exercise, walking and running alongside Grace and Ninny.
“I usually take them out four times a day for a run and they enjoy it so much that I enjoy it too,” said Grace.
“They know exactly when it’s time for their run and they tell me, loud and clear.”
KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Grace Bruinsma takes Kona and Ninny on walks four times every day.
KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Grace Bruinsma takes Kona and Ninny on walks four times every day.
In the old Japanese capital of Nara, deer have been living there free
from being turned into burgers for over a thousand years. They live
relatively comfortable fed by hordes of photo-snapping tourists.
Supposedly close contact with people have given them human
characteristics. If you bow to them, the deer will bow back.
Jeannette Hall walks beside a pond in central Alberta, a friendly old goat named Midnight baahhing behind her. She waits for it to catch up, then gives the 11-year-old nanny a drink from a water bottle.
All around, there are goats. A Boer here, a Lamancha there. Here an Angora, there a Kiko.
They amble along a path ahead of her, stopping to bite tops off tansies and scarf down scentless chamomile. They stand on their hind legs to prune leaves on aspens and scrape bark off poplars. They climb hills and perch atop rocks and then leap off, like kids at a playground.
“It’s like having 100 toddlers,” Ms. Hall says. “But these guys won’t grow up.”
For the past three years, she and her husband, Dan Vandenberg, have operated Baah’d Plant Management & Reclamation. They travel all over Alberta with a herd of 400 goats that are trained to eat noxious and invasive weeds. Last week, they bedded down in Calgary, where their mission was to rid Confluence Park of the scourge of leafy spurge. This week they begin a gig in Edmonton, chowing down on bothersome burdock and removing dead grass at Rundle Park.
It is the second year the city has engaged the goats as an organic alternative to using chemicals. Not only do the animals mow down a variety of problem plants, but they also churn up soil and then fertilize it naturally.
“I don’t do this because I love goats,” Ms. Hall, 33, says. “I do it because I love the environment.”
At 19, she had fake nails, a spray-on tan and highlights in her hair. She was an aspiring actress and college student until she saw environmentalist David Suzuki give a lecture at Calgary’s Mount Royal University about living a balanced life.
‘It’s like having 100 toddlers’: Herd of goats helps Alberta cities keep weeds at bay
Marty Klinkenberg
LACOMBE, ALTA.
Published June 11, 2018 Updated June 11, 2018
Baah'd Plant Management + Reclamation’s goats graze at Confluence Park in Calgary, Alta., June 5, 2018. Jeff McIntosh/The Globe and Mail
Jeannette Hall walks beside a pond in central Alberta, a friendly old goat named Midnight baahhing behind her. She waits for it to catch up, then gives the 11-year-old nanny a drink from a water bottle.
All around, there are goats. A Boer here, a Lamancha there. Here an Angora, there a Kiko.
They amble along a path ahead of her, stopping to bite tops off tansies and scarf down scentless chamomile. They stand on their hind legs to prune leaves on aspens and scrape bark off poplars. They climb hills and perch atop rocks and then leap off, like kids at a playground.
“It’s like having 100 toddlers,” Ms. Hall says. “But these guys won’t grow up.”
For the past three years, she and her husband, Dan Vandenberg, have operated Baah’d Plant Management & Reclamation. They travel all over Alberta with a herd of 400 goats that are trained to eat noxious and invasive weeds. Last week, they bedded down in Calgary, where their mission was to rid Confluence Park of the scourge of leafy spurge. This week they begin a gig in Edmonton, chowing down on bothersome burdock and removing dead grass at Rundle Park.
At
19, she had fake nails, a spray-on tan and highlights in her hair. She
was an aspiring actress and college student until she saw
environmentalist David Suzuki give a lecture at Calgary’s Mount Royal
University about living a balanced life.
It
is the second year the city has engaged the goats as an organic
alternative to using chemicals. Not only do the animals mow down a
variety of problem plants, but they also churn up soil and then
fertilize it naturally.
“I don’t do this because I love goats,” Ms. Hall, 33, says. “I do it because I love the environment.”
He was heckled at the end – for driving a diesel automobile – and it got her thinking. Later that night, she told her mom, “I am going to live in the bush for two years.”
She wanted to see how close to being carbon-free she could get, and lived on a parcel of her grandfather’s land in a 12-by 15-foot cabin without electricity or heat. She snowshoed in, in the dead of winter. She cooked on a camp stove, cleansed herself with sponge baths and used an outhouse.
“I
lived in snowpants and slept with my dog to keep warm,” Ms. Hall says.
“I will never forget trying to sleep on the first night. I was shivering
and watching my breath.”
She moved
back to Calgary two years later to pursue a diploma in environmental
technology at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. She was
employed in the oil and gas industry and as a habitat co-ordinator for a
conservation organization before going to work for Alberta Parks, where
she met her husband, a maintenance supervisor at the Bow Valley
Campground at the time.
They have
been married for five years, and have been shepherding goats around for
the last three. The herd they acquired had previously been used as part
of a land-management research project.
“We didn’t just buy random goats,” Ms. Hall says.
They
sold all of their belongings, sinking every cent into their business.
They downsized from a four-bedroom house into an eight-by 16-foot cabin
in southern Alberta where they live off the grid. They travel with the
goats from work site to work site, sleeping in a motorhome with the
weed-eaters corralled in pens at night.
“We
are the only ones doing it on a scale like this,” she says. “Keeping
them on the weeds is the trick. You have to be present and manage them.”
The goats’ mothers teach them which plants to eat, and Ms. Hall reinforces it by hand-feeding them noxious weeds as babies.
Hall says she feeds noxious weeds to baby goats to teach them which ones to eat. Jeff McIntosh/The Globe and Mail
“It is like training a dog,” she says. “You have to pick a whole lot of weeds until they start eating them intentionally.”
Ms. Hall writes daily reports and takes soil samples wherever they are working. She studies the nutrient content in an attempt to determine what causes the weeds to grow there.
She and her husband have a growing list of clients, including farmers, property owners that engage the goats to eat brush that could fuel fires, and companies clearing the way for pipelines and power transmission lines. They happily graze on oxeye daisy and yellow toadflax, Canadian thistle and dandelions, and create a sensation wherever they go. In Calgary and Edmonton, park use soars.
“We shut down Deerfoot Trail once,” she says of the busy thoroughfare in Calgary. “Too many people turned out to see them. There was no place to park.
“It was great.”
The goats will arrive in Edmonton sometime this week, and will return to Rundle Park two or three times over the summer. The duration of the stays depend on the weeds’ tenacity.
The city is planning two “Meet and Bleats” with the herd some time in July.
Last week, Joy Lakhan, Edmonton’s goat co-ordinator, was preparing for their stay. Tanks with 2,000 litres of drinking water were hauled in, as were loads of mulch for their bedding.
“I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with them last summer,” Ms. Lakhan says. “They are extremely friendly and amazing to watch. There is a certain simplicity and brilliance in what they do.”
Suzuki, a Great Pyrenees dog, protects the goats from coyotes and other predators.
Jeff McIntosh/The Globe and Mail
Before travelling to Edmonton, Ms. Hall and Mr. Vandenberg and their goats made a quick stop last week in Lacombe, where the herd was tasked with eating weeds around sewage-treatment lagoons.
The pair walk along with the goats, and have cattle dogs that help keep them in line. They also have a 160-pound Great Pyrenees dog named Suzuki who protects the goats from coyotes and other predators.
The goats follow closely behind Suzuki as he keeps a careful watch for trouble.
When the goats begin to wander too far afield, Ms. Hall hollers.
“Get back,” she shouts.
The herd turns and comes back, following her command like a bunch of puppies.
“You can’t do that with a bunch of farm goats,” she says.
Every few hours each day, just like clockwork, Ninny the goat and
Kona the dog start getting restless and tell Grace Bruinsma in no
uncertain terms that it’s time to go for their walk.
The pair have become inseparable and look forward to their walks on a
rural Aldergrove street with their companion Grace Bruinsma.
KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Grace Bruinsma takes Kona and Ninny on walks four times every day.
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Capra Aegagrus, which are ancestors of the domestic goat and are on the
International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened
species, climb up the side of a mountain.
Photograph: Ali İhsan Öztürk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Every few hours each day, just like clockwork, Ninny the goat and
Kona the dog start getting restless and tell Grace Bruinsma in no
uncertain terms that it’s time to go for their walk.
The pair have become inseparable and look forward to their walks on a
rural Aldergrove street with their companion Grace Bruinsma.
Over recent months they’ve become a bit of a sensation with passing
motorists, who often stop and take photos and videos of the trio
trotting along 24 Avenue.
Kona the dog is still a youngster and can be a bit of a brat and
escape artist, so Grace and husband Andrew keep him on a leash when he’s
not in his kennel. Ninny the goat, on the other hand, is eager to
follow Kona and Grace and sticks close to them during their walks
without any leash or harness to restrain her.
“It started about half a year ago when I took Kona out for his
exercise, Ninny started bawling that she wanted to come along with us,”
said Grace.
“I thought, why not? She sticks real close to us and listens to me
when I tell her to stop and make room for passing cars, and stands on
the shoulder or a driveway with us. And if I don’t take her she cries
non-stop in her paddock.”
“So many people get a kick out of it,” adds Andrew. “People stop, take photos, and ask Grace if she needs help.”
The couple are hoping that Kona will grow out of his predilection for
running away to the neighbours so that he doesn’t have to spend the
rest of his life in his kennel. But in the meantime he needs his daily
exercise, walking and running alongside Grace and Ninny.
“I usually take them out four times a day for a run and they enjoy it so much that I enjoy it too,” said Grace.
“They know exactly when it’s time for their run and they tell me, loud and clear.”
KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Grace Bruinsma takes Kona and Ninny on walks four times every day.
KURT LANGMANN PHOTO Grace Bruinsma takes Kona and Ninny on walks four times every day.
8bitballoon しま @8bitballoonart Jun 2 
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