Sheep as lawnmowers - a new way to eat your own lawn

Lawn turf is America's largest crop, a crop for which we get remarkably little return.

I had always thought about sheep as lawnmowers - here is a guy who tried it. The movable electric fence strikes me as being the real problem: I wonder if you could combine some kind of minimal moveable fence with the kind of invisible fence one uses for dogs? At any rate, no real danger this could happen in Evanston anytime soon...but I'd pay for a lawn service that could sell me pecorino romano as well!

largest irrigated crop.

while sheeps milk, meat, etc., from my own heard that would graze on my almost acre of grass is tempting..., Ill stick to using my John Deere tractor while enjoying a few barley pops.

I would think that cleaning up after the sheep and looking after their well being would offset whatever little benefit you would get from them munching the grass down. Besides, in the article Mhays linked to, they eat the "good" stuff so you would have to block all that off or watch them all the time. I'm spoiled, I have a 16 yr old neighbor that mows for me.

I had a friend in Oregon who had a goat chained up to a wheel rim in his yard. The goat would eat a circle of grass in the radius of the rim, then my friend would move it. Since they lived on the edge of a rain forest, there was no shortage of vegetation for the animal to munch on. Throw in the occassional pail of garbage, and it seemed like an equtitable arrangement for all parties. The goat saved the work of two appliances and packed his own fertilizer factory.

Hi,

My sister's horses do most of the lawn at her place. Only immediately around the house do they mow the lawn. She has one of these electric moveable fences that look like rope. The horses steer clear of the edges. Her dogs zip in and out of the area without any issue.

I don't know if this still happens today, I knew of one large estate in Lake Forest who had sheep grazing. It allowed them some agricultural credits and real estate taxes were calculated as a farm. This estate no longer is intact and its land is now a sub-division.

Regards,

A veterinarian friend of mine in Australia had a sheep that kept their lawn cropped. She said the sheep was very affectionate and became a pet. The problem was that the sheep (Victoria) was so pet-like that people kept feeding her things that weren't good for sheep, and she had kidney failure and died. My friend said having the sheep was great -- an entirely positive experience. However, you'd probably want to check with a vet to find out what the issues might be.

One of the wineries we went to in Oregon, Soter, has sheep brought in. They have a large area, but not all of it is planted with grapes. In order to get certified as sustainable they have to treat all of their property as sustainable. Mowing all of their area down would blow whatever else they were doing out of the water. So they bring in a few sheep and goats. The animals get nice grazing, they get their weeds and grasses tended, plus fresh meat now and again.

http://www.sotervineyards.com/theplace_live.php