Taking care of grass and weeds is all in a day's work for these goats

Or if Ricotta, Edam, Gouda and Burrata aren't available, you could instead have Bert, Ernie and Elmo there getting the job done.

These goats are part of the 74-strong herd at Hunter Valley Goat Hire, a sustainable and ethical vegetation management service based at Mount Vincent.

Founder Karissa MacGregor rescues male goats from local dairy farms and gives them a life they wouldn't have had otherwise.

They are put to work grazing properties to eat grass, leaves and other vegetation, which sounds like a goat's dream job.

Ms MacGregor said she has a close relationship with the farms the goats come from.

"We talk about rescuing goats, and we do, but rescuing brings up all those feelings about taking them away from somewhere horrible," she said.

"The breeders that we work with, and we work with them in partnership is what I like to say, they are absolutely incredible people and they give the goats a really good start."

Each goat is hand-raised, and responds to Ms MacGregor's call. It's not uncommon for her to be supervising the herd with one of her younger goats sitting on her lap.

Ms MacGregor has three different working goat crews, and depending on their age and experience the crews will travel anywhere up to 45 minutes from home to work.

"These boys [the A crew] are the boys that work all the time and they're very experienced, they're really comfortable in what they do and well behaved, they never jump a fence or anything like that," she said.

"We do jobs big and small, we do backyards and we do massive acreages."

Ms MacGregor said the goats eat plants from the ground as well as trees, and will munch on anything whether it's green or brown.

"They just love a bit of everything and they're really good for fire mitigation work... so when the RFS do a hazard reduction burn they burn to a scorch height of about 1.2 [metres] or something, and the goats do exactly the same thing but they eat it," she said.

"This is a win-win situation and environmentally they're brilliant.

"They're ruminants so they've got four stomachs, so everything that they eat here, the weeds and seeds and things, goes through these four stomachs and is completely broken down so they don't re-seed problem weeds."

They also have small, soft feet that don't cause damage to soil.

A solution to a problem

During COVID lockdown, Ms MacGregor moved to a property with heavy lantana and vegetation coverage, and needed a solution.

She saw a clip of a business in the United States which takes goats to properties and moves them through.

Ms MacGregor thought that would be the perfect solution for her property, only there wasn't any service like it locally. So she decided to start it herself.

She started off with two rescued goats, bottle feeding and hand-raising them.

Since then, Ms MacGregor has left her nursing job to manage the goats full time, and the herd has only grown from there.

To enquire about Hunter Valley Goat Hire, visit www.huntervalleygoathire.com.au.