Hungry Michigan Goats Devour Union Jobs: Grievance

KALAMAZOO, MI — A herd of 20 goats grazing the Western Michigan University campus in Kalamazoo are at the center of a complaint filed against the school by the nation’s largest public employee bargaining unit. The 400-member Local 1668 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a grievance against the university, arguing the goats are essentially “scab” labor and are devouring union jobs along with vegetation on a 16-acre lot the animals have been assigned to clear.

The university says the goats are doing a job that hasn’t been assigned to a union crew, clearing away the overgrown brush, shrubbery, trees and weeds from the lot — and with more efficiency than human-operated heavy machinery.

The goats, supplied by an outfit known as Munchers on Hooves, were brought in specifically to clear the lot because they have insatiable appetites. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Grand Rapids Patch,or click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also,if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

No one complained about the grazing goats, Muncher on Hooves owner Garrett Fickle told WOOD-TV. The university used goats in a pilot project last year, liked the results and brought the herbivores back for another year.

“When you use a Bobcat to try to clear things, it just compacts the ground, tears up your seeds,” Fickle said. “It takes your seeds that are dormant and brings them to the surface, then allows them to grow. Well, when a goat goes to the bathroom, the seed doesn’t grow.”

Fickle and his wife, Gina, have been raising Boer goats for seven years and began using them to clear buckthorn from their property near Coldwater, Michigan, in 2015.

“Our goats all have their own personalities and work together as a team in hard-to-reach places. Every site that they go to is seen by them as a new salad bar,” Gina Fickle said in a Western Michigan University press release. “They’re friendly and used to working 24 hours a day, whether in the country or city. Noise doesn't bother them — they just kept on munching even with the recent fireworks.”

In the complaint, AFSCME Local 1668 says the deal with Munchers on Hooves for goats to clear overgrown vegetation violates its collective bargaining agreement, the Battle Creek Enquirer reported. The university didn’t notify the union that it was planning to use goat crews, according to a chief steward report obtained by the newspaper.

University spokeswoman Cheryl Roland told the Enquirer that the goats weren’t brought on campus to cut grass, a union job, and that they tackle weeds and vegetation overgrowth that can be dangerous to humans, such as poison ivy. Goats are also environmentally sound, Roland said.

“Not wanting to use chemicals, either, we chose the goat solution to stay environmentally friendly,” Roland said. “The area is rife with poison ivy and other invasive species, and our analysis showed the goats to be a sustainable and cost-effective way of removing them.”

The goats aren’t, well, fickle about flora species that can send humans racing to the doctor for antidotes, owner Garrett Fickle said.

“They’re happy as long as they’ve got plenty of food to eat,” he told WOOD-TV.

The lawsuit could be a foreshadow of litigation to come as goats gain traction in Michigan and around the county as a sustainable and economical way to clear overgrowth and do other landscaping jobs previously handled by human workers.

For example, the Ottawa County, Michigan, Parks and Recreation Commission has used goats in its land management program since 2014, and the University of Michigan Golf Course rented some last year for clean-up work, according to the WMU website. Goats also are happily grazing at major airports in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco, as well as at higher education institutions such as Clemson and Oregon State universities and the universities of Georgia and Wisconsin-Madison, WMU said.

Nick Gooch, a WMU horticulturalist overseeing the project, says it costs about $1,618 to clear a quarter acre using labor, machinery and herbicides, but using goats for the same job can shave $1,280 from the costs. The goats’ effectiveness depends on topography and the variety of diversity of plant species, and in areas where vegetation is especially invasive and aggressive, two or three repeat grazings may be necessary.

Goats can also navigate steep slopes, ditches and stream banks, and they won’t destroy beneficial plants if carefully managed to avoid overgrazing, Gooch said. They leave sites fairly clean, reducing the labor-intensive work to remove torn, tattered and uncut material, he said.

In June, AFSCME Local 1668 commented on its Facebook page about media coverage about the goats: “Cute story. Too bad they didn't interview the 9 actual employees who are laid off without work or unemployment. Not so cute to a single mom without work.”

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images News/Getty Images