City Grazing is San Francisco’s goat-powered nonprofit dedicated to sustainable land management and fire risk reduction through outreach, education, and implementation of goat grazing.
Our goats are available to rent for any size property – from overgrown backyards to larger commercial and institutional properties. City Grazing’s herd is eager to eat your weeds and aid in fire prevention naturally!
For over ten years, City Grazing has worked with a wide range of Bay Area schools, community organizations, municipalities, residents, and businesses. Our herd of 100+ adopted goats provide many environmental and community benefits, and we welcome your donations and volunteering to sustain and expand our impact.
We are happy to answer any questions and love finding creative opportunities to connect goats with the greater world!
WHY WORK WITH CITY GRAZING?
Managed grazing is an effective, ecologically sound way to minimize fire hazard and invasive vegetation while promoting soil health and native plants. Additionally, beyond these environmental improvements, City Grazing’s unique community-focused approach to goat grazing creates many powerful benefits for our community’s health and well-being.
Fire Risk Reduction: Grazing immediately removes potential fire fuel in the form of weeds and brush. Additionally, by promoting deeper root development in perennial plants, grazing leads to more water stored in the earth, greater drought resistance, and, therefore, improved fire resistance. For more information on our work to keep the Bay Area safer from fires, check out this recent news story, City Grazing is working to keep SF safe from fires.
Invasive Plant Control: Many of the Bay Area’s most undesirable plants are happily eaten by goats! These include stubborn species like English Ivy, Cape Ivy, Himalayan blackberry, poison oak, fennel, Scotch Broom, and French Broom, just to name a few. Grazing also discourages weeds by sterilizing their seeds as they pass through goat digestive systems.
Improvements to Soil: Managed grazing supercharges the soil! Goats convert unwanted plant material and fire fuel into pellets of immediately bioavailable soil nutrients. No composting is required and nutrients return directly to the topsoil.
Native Plant Support: Grazing encourages regrowth of perennial native plants by removing weeds that compete with them, as well as by promoting healthy, deep root development in native perennials.
Carbon Sequestration: Carbon sequestration is an important component in the fight against climate change. Because managed grazing causes deeper, healthier root systems in native perennials, these plants are able to pull more carbon from the air for storage in soil.
Workforce Development: Hiring from underserved and at-risk communities has always been a guiding principle of our organization. We exclusively hire locally, provide valuable skills training, pay living wages, and create an environment where character can shine through work with both animals and clients. Our herd is housed in San Francisco’s Bayview, and we are very proud that our base of operations is in a neighborhood we strive to serve.
Community Well-Being: Who doesn’t love goats?! Bay Area residents tell us over and over that they love seeing our goats in action grazing in urban settings. Contact with goats facilitates a sense of well-being and provides a wonderful opportunity for environmental education. City Grazing also inspires our community with public appearances, school visits, and social events.
A Home for Goats in Need: Our herd consists entirely of goats that needed rescue or a new home. Some of them are retired dairy goats, in some cases the previous owners were not able to keep them anymore, and in others the goats were rescued to avoid becoming part of the meat industry. We socialize and integrate newly adopted goats into the herd to be sure they’ll be happy working closely with the public in urban grazing settings.