- In Montana, noxious weeds have become a problem because we have vast areas that have undergone disturbance and degraded soil.

(bold orchestral music) The dominant way that people manage noxious weeds is through spraying herbicides.

But what we're left with after spraying is this toxic residue that's harmful to our planet, to us, and we're killing all that soil life.

That's where the goats come in.

(goats bleat) They're not annihilating anything.

They're not killing anything.

They're simply managing that population of weeds so that other species of plants can also stand a chance.

(birds chirping) (footsteps crunch) When I arrived in 2010, the grass was really sparse and it was dominated by knapweed, which is one of the dominant weeds out in this region.

The county came and told Ivan that he needed to do something about his weeds and gave him his options, and he was like, "Well, what are the, what's the natural option?"

And they said, "Well, you could graze 'em with goats."

And so that was part of his choice to start getting goats.

(bright music) And then soon after, I came and joined him.

(Chia laughs) Yeah, just through years of consecutive rotational grazing, we've been able to shift the landscape to what it is now and what we've been working hard at over the last 15 years is changing our management to really support the health of the overall grassland.

And so by rotating the goats through, we've been able to increase the fertility, increase the ground cover, and that diminishes the hold that the knapweed has.

My name is Chia Thrane and I'm a rancher in Red Lodge, Montana.

(gentle music) My family and I manage our herd of goats.

They're mostly meat goats and we move them around our county for land regeneration and for weed management.

In our region, there's no one else who's offering contract goat grazing services.

In Montana, we have noxious weed laws that mandate that all landowners have to be managing their weeds in some way.

And so a lot of people spray and the people who don't wanna spray usually reach out to us.

(goats bleat) A noxious weed is a non-native plant that has a tendency to take over and boss other plants around, essentially.

(laughs) The main noxious weeds that we work with in our area are knapweed, Canadian thistle, houndstongue, and leafy spurge.

They all have this characteristic of being very hearty and resilient, drought tolerant, very opportunistic.

We're seeing a lot of deep tap roots also, so they're indicating compacted ground and some mineral imbalance in the soil.

And most of them are also prolific flowering plants, meaning they produce a lot of seeds.

That also tells me that they're providing a lot of pollination services.

I don't think these noxious weeds are going anywhere.

They're here to stay and we just have to find ways to manage them and to keep them in check.

The dominant way that people in Montana manage noxious weeds is through spraying herbicides.

- [Voiceover] With herbicides, the weed killers, aerial dusting and spraying has become a specialized field.

- When you first apply them, they'll kill the broadleaf plants, but to me, when I see a landscape that is only grass, I see that something is off.

Because truly in a healthy ecosystem, you really want that biodiversity.

You want the plant diversity and you want to see something blooming at all times of the year.

And the only way to achieve that is to have lots of things growing.

But what we're left with after spraying is this toxic residue that's more harmful to our planet, to us.

The glyphosate in Roundup, for instance, they've found it in the rainwater.

So these chemicals are so much more persistent than we commonly acknowledge.

And so to us it's like, oh, we really need to think about how we're using them and if it's actually necessary.

Maybe what's needed is just more dialogue and more questioning like, what are these chemicals doing to us?

What are they doing to our soil and our water cycle?

What are they doing to our ecosystems?

So this is leafy spurge.

It's in the Euphorbia family, and it contains this like milky white sap that can irritate people's skin and it can also be like mildly toxic to cattle and horses.

And so that's one of the reasons why it's on the noxious weed list.

So it's proliferating in these contexts where it's not being grazed, but the goats love it.

(bright music) Okay, well here's proof of concept that these goats are doing their job.

There was a patch of leafy spurge right here.

You can see here, here's a little fallen bloom of it.

It has this like yellowish green and I can see one of the stems that got eaten off.

They've literally been in here for 10, 15 minutes and this patch is almost completely grazed.

So yeah, they're very effective.

When a goat grazes a weed, they're usually targeting like the leaves, or the flowers, or the seed heads 'cause that's like what packs the most nutritional punch for them.

So they're, immediately, they're reducing the seed production and then they're also removing most of the photosynthesizing parts of that plant and so they're weakening that weed.

And then again, with the rotational grazing, we come in and we graze and then we leave and we allow that land to rest and then to recover.

And those are really important parts of this regenerative process.

Hey, girl.

Come on, girl.

(goat bleats) This way.

They're just about due for a hoof trim, that's for sure.

(milk sprays) And milking definitely takes some specific hand and arm muscles when you haven't done it in a while, like right after winter, it's like such an arm workout.

You're just like, "Oh, when will it be done?"

(laughs) (dog pants) So we move them about every two days or so.

But it really depends on the size of the paddock, what our goal is with the graze.

And right now we're just doing like a quick graze, but making sure that they're grazing the weeds thoroughly.

Then everything else can bounce back once we leave.

That's something that we really love seeing is just a pasture that has diversity.

Anytime we're seeing flowers blooming, we're so happy because it just indicates that there's food for many here.

And that's, you know, we obviously we care about our goats, but we also, in this work, we care a lot about all the other animals that the, the other living things, (Chia laughs) expand my language, all the living things that, you know, land can support.

Let's go, goats!

(goats bleat) Let's go, goats!

(gentle music) It probably will never get old, the bunny hopping flopping of the ears, and it's definitely just one of the most satisfying moments to just let your herd into fresh pasture because you know you just make them so happy.

That's what they live for.

And so, yeah, it just feels good and you know you're taking good care of 'em.

And then it's just like so beautiful too to see 'em out there on the, on the pasture.

Usually my daughter, Yaro, is in charge of feeding the baby, so we'll see if she's up yet.

(goats bleat) (gentle music) Thanks, Ethel.

It's been really a joy to raise our kids out here, on the ranch.

Let's reach way under there.

My children know so many names of plants and they, you know, love watching bugs and they also have a way with the animals also just because that's what they've known.

I'm so proud when I see Yaro jumping in to help us move goats or the kids as they like are able to jump in and help with chores.

It's really like this special aspect of shared work.

It is a lot to balance.

There's definitely some days where I feel like I am doing fine as a goat herder and like not doing great as a mom or you know, maybe spend some chunks where I'm like devoting more towards being mom and, and then I feel this like draw to wanna be involved with the goats more.

But definitely, motherhood is like a very central role for me, for sure.

This is a paddock where the main herd just was.

You can see it's heavily trampled.

They've grazed it down hard and now this is its time to rest, and recover, and regrow.

In contrast to how tall the grass is over here.

With the goats, we milk them and drink their milk.

We eat their meat and we feed them in exchange, so it's a very mutually beneficial relationship.

(bright music) Mm.

June, that looks so yummy.

What else should we put on there?

- [June] I want sausage.

- Okay, yeah.

The sausage is gonna be so yummy.

That's from our goat.

I think there just needs to be educating people about the benefits of these grazing animals, like what they can do.

It would be so neat to see that as a more dominant land management practice.

Choosing to not use chemicals as part of our management program has been a huge journey of learning because when you don't just reach for the chemicals, then you have to be really creative and you have to be constantly learning and observing what's happening on the ground level.

In terms of, you know, minimizing the toxicity of our landscapes, anyone really, but you know, especially people with children and dogs.

If we were all aware of the chemicals that are used right now to manage so many landscapes, you wouldn't really want your precious people to be walking through all that ground.

This is our home.

(gentle music) This is a place in which we need to be acting in a way of respect and pitching in.

I hope that it can become this, like a natural thing to want to caretake land and want to be an active and positive participant in the community of living things, which we really are.

(gentle music) (bright music)