Shasta College will welcome about 600 new faces on campus this week in the form of goats! The college has contracted with Red Bluff’s Western Grazers farm to bring their four-legged workers on campus to perform fire mitigation maintenance by eating brush and organic debris across 61 acres of Shasta College’s main campus on Old Oregon Trail. The goats will arrive on Monday, July 22, and graze three specific campus areas over the next couple of weeks. The areas will be fenced, and a herder and at least one dog will be with them.
The goats are expected to take a month to complete the Buenaventura Boulevard project. Photos and video by Jon Lewis.
Heavy equipment has been used to clear the dry brush in prior years, but using goats avoided the consumption of around 3,000 gallons of diesel – and an estimated 31 tons of CO2 created by its combustion. If you see the four-legged visitors on the campus, please feel free to enjoy watching them from a few feet back – but don’t touch or feed them. They’re hard at work doing their part for fire safety on the campus!
