Animals in the garden provide so many services for us! They can be sources of manure, food, milk, wool or leather, pest control, pollination, nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, indicators, and of course, companionship! The only job for humans in the garden is creative thinking, and for every other task there is an animal who will do it better and enjoy doing it. When placed appropriately in the system, it’s a win-win-win for the animals, the human, and the earth.

I got the chance to look at the designs of many forage and rotation systems for animals. Here’s a design I made for some dairy goats! (I chose goats in honor of my friends at AislingQuoy, and for my love of goat cheese)

 

 

It’s a four paddock system, one is the home (moveable huts for sleeping and shade, feeding and water troughs, trampolines, rocks and sticks to play with). The second is the forage paddock, with hay, corn, and other grasses. The third is a paddock of native trees, with big rocks and a little pond. It also has a goat medicinal garden with varies herbs so they can have access to nutrients they may need. The goats come in for morning milking at the dairy shed (located conveniently in the center), and then can be released into either the native paddock for foraging and playing or the grasses paddock for grazing. The fourth paddock is a regenerating “home” paddock, which is an annual vegetable garden right now, and will be used again as the home paddock on a rotational basis so both paddocks can get a chance to recover, and the manure deposits can be used as nutrients for human food.