By Susan de Castro McCann

Redstone Review Editor

LYONS – The goats are having a picnic even if it snows, blows or it’s freezing cold. They are dining on noxious weeds at Cemex, the cement plant just east of Lyons.

The goats are owned by Lou Colby who has been running her goat grazing business called Golden Hooves for about 10 years. Colby claims that their home is on the road.

“We are nomadic,” said Colby. “We all stay together around the clock.” The goats are being housed in an old barn at Cemex and Colby has a small house trailer that she stays in on location near her goats.

“Sometimes we go to Arizona together and that’s a lot warmer,” she said. “These are Spanish goats from Texas.” Colby speaks Spanish to her goats or sometimes she speaks Greek to them. Either way they seem to understand her and move around to the dogs’ bidding. She works the goats with sheep dogs that make sure that the goats stay in a pack and no one strays too far away.

Colby has a few favorite goats that she has named. One of them is Tacquito, a large brown goat who is always nuzzling people for a handout. He seems to go with the flow, eating a few weeds here and there, walking up behind the dogs, checking out people or posing for the camera.

“The goats like to eat all kinds of weeds that people are trying to get rid of,” said Colby. “They like mullen, leafy spurge, thistle and other things that interest them. I also feed them corn everyday, lots of carbs so they can keep warm and I give them alfalfa hay which helps their protein intake.”

Plant manager Steve Goodrich said that he had been researching various forms of weed control at the plant when he came across the idea to use goats. “We tried various forms of spraying and other treatments and then I heard about the goats and contacted Lou,” said Goodrich. “These goats are doing some winter foraging in targeted areas which is called precision grazing. The goats focus on weeds that are a concern to the county and they eat down into the roots to kill the weeds. They will come back a few times this spring also. This is a neat alternative.”

Colby plans to be at Cemex for at least another week or two and then she is off to Fort Lupton to graze the goats at the Lafarge plant.

Colby studied agriculture at California Polytechnic College; she raised range rams, was a boarding horse stable manager in California, ranched in Montana and Colorado and was a professional dog trainer. With her goat grazing business she specializes in environmental restoration, brush suppression and ecological conditioning. Colby’s clients include CU in Boulder, the Bureau of Land Management, businesses, homeowners associations and private land owners

If there is no barn to house her goats at night on location, she uses an electronic mesh fence, which keeps the goats confined to an area where they won’t run off, and helps to keep the predators away. The fence is solar powered.  “I can’t just rely on my fence,” said Colby. “I have to have my dogs there also to protect the goats. The electronic fences are used in grazing along highways and to make the goats graze more evenly in a concentrated area. Then I just keep moving the fences along with the goats. I have to keep an eye on them so that they won’t overgraze an area. It also helps their systems to keep rotating an area so that they don’t get too many noxious weeds all at once; they can get too much tannin from the weeds which upsets their tummies. But their saliva and their liver allows them to eat weeds with lots of tannin that most other animals can’t eat. They are pretty neat little animals.”

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