TO the untrained eye, it might look like these goats are just kidding around.
But the crews at Hunter Valley Goat Hire don't bleat around the bush, they've got serious work to do.
It all started when Karissa MacGregor was looking for a vegetation management solution at her own property, now she and her crew of 80 goats are putting mowers out of business at suburban homes across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie.
Today is World Goat Day and Ms MacGregor has shared their story.
"I was in a pretty high pressure nursing job at the time, and I was looking for something a bit different, a bit of a different work-life balance and I took a risk," she said.
"Luckily I've got an amazing wife who puts up with my craziness and paid the bills while we started doing this, but it's really successful now.
"Goats are the future, I reckon."
The unusual endeavour was born from a desire to promote ethically and environmentally sustainable solutions to vegetation management issues for property owners in the Lower Hunter Valley.
One adult goat will munch through about 10 square metres of light to moderate vegetation in a day.
Hunter Valley Goat Hire has a strong focus on animal welfare and reverse carbon burdening, with the crews of buck or 'billy' goats mostly rehomed from dairy farms.
"It's interesting, because most people that rescue animals take on a really philosophical kind of opposition to what they do," Ms MacGregor said.
"But we're very different, we work in partnership with the dairy goat breeders.
"Goat's milk is really, really important for immunocompromised people and some babies, so if the dairy goat producers who make amazing goat milk had to keep 50 per cent of their herd as boys, they would never be able to produce that milk."
So instead, Hunter Valley Goat Hire purchases the boys as babies from the four dairy goat breeders they work with.
It provides an opportunity of life to a male dairy buckling who might otherwise be euthanised and offers a fiscal return to dairy goat farmers on what would be unprofitable pregnancies.
The goats are looked after, loved, desexed and eventually trained to head out in teams to mow lawns across the Hunter.
"It's just a win-win situation," Ms MacGregor said.
"It's about relationships, even customers that we've had who turned into friends decided that they want goats, but having goats of your own is a big commitment, so we found that customers will actually spend money to put in their own infrastructure that's goat-proof.
"When the goats are on a day off, or if they've got a week when they're not booked, I'll just take the goats there to clear the yard for free.
"We've created a community around what we do, which is really cool."
Every job is different, and Hunter Valley Goat Hire offers a number of options to manage vegetation issues.
There's the backyard blitz, where the goats hang out munching grass in a secure area until the work is done, the weekly rent-a-goat, free grazing on large rural properties and cell-grazing which is their most popularly commissioned job.
Cell grazing involves transporting the goats to the site, where they cell graze inside portable energised fences.
The crews are managed onsite by a trained 'Goatherd' and are taken to and from the job until the work is done.
Each crew, which is made up of about 15 to 20 goats, will work together for the rest of their lives.
There's the 'Working Boys', the 'Facems, Bridgertons, Gynnie Weasley's Boys' and the 'Cheese Boys' who are still in training.
The Cheese Boys include Chedda, 'Ricky' Ricotta, 'Chucky' Paneer and 'Blinky Bill' Burrata along with the rest of the charcuterie board.
There's a support crew of girls which include Gladys Butterchicken and Dr Kerry Chant, and the 'Peanut Butter Sandwich Club' who prefer a good scratch and a snack to a day on the job.
Ms MacGregor said she tried teaching them goat yoga, but it "turned out more like goat rugby".
"Goats come from this place of connection, so they won't trust you if they're not bonded to you," she said.
"We've raised them all as babies and bottle fed them, they think we're part of their herd and they will follow us because they trust us instinctively."
The goats undertook their first job about 18 months ago, before that Hunter Valley Goat Hire was building the herd.
Since then they've done a lot of work in Mayfield, Warners Bay, Wallsend and have started moving into backyards at Kurri Kurri.
Ms MacGregor has a property at Lovedale which she hopes to transform into a fully-fledged goat sanctuary.
"What we do is for the goats," she said.
"If the goats weren't happy, we would stop working.
"We don't do this to make money, we do it for the welfare of the goats."
Goats help minimise reseeding of weeds as their ruminant digestive system impacts the regenerative ability of many plants, they have a negative carbon footprint and eliminate vegetation on the ground and up to 1.2 metres thanks to their extremely non-picky appetite.
