KC-area ‘Queen of the goats’ shepherds voracious eaters to toughest mowing jobs in town

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Katherine Kelly is a modern day shepherd. Or is she a lawn care provider?

She’s both actually.

Kelly is co-owner of 2 Birds Farm and operator of Goats on the Go JoCo, a business that provides herds of goats to help mow down vegetation on larger plots of land.

The operation is fairly straightforward. The goats, usually the females and the young of a herd, are loaded into a trailer and driven to customers’ overgrown lots and lawns. Electric fencing, to keep the goats in and potential predators out, is set up and the ravenous animals are released to the property where they will spend several days chomping away at whatever may be growing there.

“I’m the queen of the goats and goat grazing,” Kelly said on a recent morning on her farm while tending to her herd.

“When I take the goats to someone’s house to clean up their backyard or property, it becomes a meeting point between neighbors,” Kelly said. “I think that food and livestock have a way of opening up opportunities for connection between folks that can be very wonderful for the city. It’s the sign of a healthy city.”

2 Birds Farm is located in Wyandotte County near Lake Quivira. Kelly was raised in a rural area outside El Dorado, Kansas , and hated it as a kid. After moving to Boston later in life, she rediscovered her love for farming. “When I realized I could live in the city and still farm, it was the perfect combination to me.” Kelly said. She says she relishes the diversity and amenities that the city offers, and she enjoys living in the same area that her customers do.

The goats Kelly raises serve a purpose beyond clearing brush. As she’s grown her herd, she has worked through non-profit organizations to provide access to goats for refugee families that have come to the United States from countries that often rely heavily on goats in various ways. Refugee families come to the farm to buy live goats, which they then slaughter for meat. Kelly say in pretty much every part of the world goat meat is deeply appreciated for regular meals and for holidays and family events, so eating goat is an important part of their culinary culture.

While heading out to a customer’s property, Kelly talked about the work the goats have been doing at a particular site. “There are large areas of poison ivy and the goats have grazed about half of the property and will need to be moved to finish up,” Kelly said while driving her pickup truck that’s used to tow around a trailer packed with goats. “Over the course of the season, the goats will graze all kinds of different sites, everything from backyards to parks to water retention areas and industrial buildings.”

Goats are not allergic to poison ivy , they are nimble footed and are able to access areas that are very rocky and have steep hills and slopes. Kelly sets up the perimeter employing the voracious appetites of the animals to access areas difficult for humans and machinery to get to. Dominant plants such as honeysuckle, multi flora rose, and greenbriar are delicious to the goats according to Kelly.

An added benefit is the only byproduct of using goats for grazing, fresh fertilizer. Goat manure helps to add nutrients to the soil, enriching the area and allowing native plants to thrive.

One of the benefits of a program like Goats on the Go is the collaboration that happens when goat herders all in the same general area will work together to help each other get jobs accomplished. This helps to contribute to the community aspect of goat grazing.

The goats are checked on daily, usually staying for 5-10 days, but sometimes longer depending on the amount of work that needs done. They don’t need food since they are getting plenty to eat, but they do need water and mineral supplements which are replenished daily. When the goats finish grazing in one area of the property, the perimeter is moved and goats continue grazing in a new paddock. This is also called rotational grazing.

“I love moving the goats to a new pasture, they start screaming at me when they see me coming, because they know ‘Oh, there’s gonna be good food on the other side of this fence.’”

When the job is done, the goats are loaded back onto a trailer, taken back to the farm for health checks, and then deployed to the next site.

“There is a lot of driving but I get to see a lot of the city, which is nice,” Kelly said.

Goat grazing has been in Kansas City for almost a decade but is still somewhat rare, which means there are cities that do not have coding language for “livestock grazing” for the long term. Kelly often has to have permits to deploy her goats to different locations and has run into some hiccups. Some communities are still evolving when it comes to the practice.

Goats can be ornery animals at times. Who hasn’t heard the term “stubborn as a goat”?

Kelly knows all too well how ornery they can be. “There is nothing quite like a fence being knocked down and chasing your herd at 2 o’clock in the morning through a neighborhood, trying to get them back in again. No one will quite understand that like other goat grazers do,” Kelly said as she laughed.

All the goats at 2 Birds Farm have a name and are recognized as individuals. Some have names like Hera, named after the Greek goddess. Others just have numbers like 26. All the goats have a distinct personality according to Kelly. “I grew up around horses, pigs, cattle. The goats are bratty, smart, and curious. They have really distinct personalities and really tight family bonds. They form cliques and units, and it’s really fun to work with them and to think like a goat,” Kelly said. “It really is just a beautiful relationship to have.”

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