Actually Google, Goggle and Noname are all champions of the ivy. Interestingly, they all much prefer to eat the ivy growing upright - on a wall or tree trunk, than ivy growing on the ground, even if the ground is a steep hill.
Here are some before...
...and after pictures representing one day of ivy chomping.
The other goats definitely don't attack the ivy the way these three do (although with blackberry in short supply, everyone is starting to eat more ivy), so we'll be moving them around the space to make sure we get all the trees stripped.
Noname likes to strip bark (notice the bright vines on the tree trunk). It was a bit of a problem on one of the apple trees, but it should help kill some of the larger ivy vines growing up the cedar trees. He's the only goat that seems to do this - they all have their idiosynchrosies, but Noname seems to have more than his share...
The strange stick huts you can see here are actually tree stumps that were overgrown with ivy and then stripped of their leaves. These stumps surround the retaining wall that was built when the lot was subdivided about 20 years ago.
Our house was the original and 3 others were built around it. A number of trees were cut in the process, and it appears that ivy was planted along the retaining wall at that time.
If only we knew then what we know now about ivy... makes me wonder what we're doing now that seems like a good idea that will turn out to be a disaster in the future - hopefully not using goats for invasive weed removal...
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