The City of Red Deer Parks Department is trying out a new way to combat invasive weed species.

As part of a pilot project, a speciality trained herd of goats were used to clean up some weeds at the Piper Creek Gardens site today.

The goal of the pilot project is to see if they can do a better job at weed control than conventional methods such as spraying or pulling by hand.

Parks Superintendent with the City of Red Deer Trevor Poth says besides the goats being a cheaper solution, they also solve a few other unique weed related issues.

"We really are focused on more agricultural transitional areas, and areas that are really challenging to access. So here we are right on the edge of a creek which means we can't use pesticides, we also have a lot of steep banks along the creek itself. So it's those types of areas that are really inaccessible by our staff and by our chemical use program that we are really focused on alternative means of control, and goats seem to be a very good solution to that."

The city has tried this type of goat based weed management in the past with not much success, but Owner of Baah'd Plant Management and Reclamation, Shepard Jeannette Hall says her goats are specifically designed for the task.

"This herd itself has been trained for the last 7 years to eat specific weeds. We have all types of management cues, we have working dogs...I think in the past they have tried using farmers, or people who, maybe didn't understand the whole program, and it was a great attempt. It is a management program, so there are times they will go for other stuff and I have to push them off of it, so that's why we are here 24/7, the animals are never left alone."

(Owner of Baah'd Plant Management and Reclamation, Shepard Jeannette Hall tends to her herd)

The goats are trained to eat weeds such as oxeye daisy, scentless chamomile, yellow toadflax, and Canada thistle, all invasive weed species.

Next stop for the goats is here in Lacombe to clean up weeds around the sewage lagoons.

A study will be done once this weed season is over, to see how well the goats do, and decide if it will become a permanent weed solution.