Goat grazing on the minds of farmers during Summer Grazing Tour

Published 3:11 pm Tuesday, June 30, 2026

By Carlie Sanderson

Farmers and producers who attended Farming Forward’s first-ever Summer Grazing Tour on June 26, an extension of their Next Step Grazing Club, had goats on their mind.

“There were a lot of people that are interested in getting into targeted goat grazing, and a lot of people that were seeing the benefits of using animals such as goats for management and pastures and stuff like that,” said Carri St. Pierre, executive director of Farming Forward.

She added that she was hoping for a larger turnout, but will hopefully have more at the next event.

“We got a lot of people come out who are interested in goats, but not a lot of cattle producers,” said St. Pierre, adding that they were hoping to target some of them as they were talking a lot about biological control of brush and invasive species.

She added that it was a fantastic event but would like to do it again at some point.

This is the first Summer Grazing Tour but they usually do one in the winter.

“The last couple of years we’ve done a winter watering tour and a winter feeding tour and we focus on strategies for winter livestock management.”

She added that this year, because they did their grazing club in the winter, they decided to extend the grazing club into a summer tour when people were actually doing the grazing.

Some of the points of discussion this year were around virtual fencing collars, so they had a bus tour to the site in the morning and looked at new tech in virtual collars.

“We have a producer that we are trialling our collars. We purchased collars last year for demonstration and research purposes, so we have them with a producer right now who’s trialling them and becoming the expert on how to use them and train the trainer, so she’s trialling them right now for us.”

They did a comparison of the e-shepherd and the halter collars. They also have a producer who is trialling the halter collars, so people were able to make a straight comparison of the designs, functions, and costs of both, along with asking both producers who have been using them some questions to get a good understanding of how they work.

In the afternoon portion of the tour, they did more of a rangeland and pasture health angle.

“We had an expert from Holistic Management Canada come and talk about rangeland and pasture health and do a little bit of an analysis on the pasture that we have our goat grazing project at,” said St. Pierre.

Some of the systems were discussed, along with how to assess system health and the tools to use for managing and assessing the health of producers’ pastures.

While there, the group also got to look at Farming Forward’s goat grazing project and were able to see some of the previously grazed areas the goats were in and how they decreased the competition of the brush that was coming in, along with how the grasses have been able to flourish after the goats had been in the area.

“We can see actual improvement in the forage quality and quantity where the goats have been taking care of the brush in those areas.

Farming Forward is currently just under halfway into the season with their goat grazing project, and St. Pierre said it has been quite impressive how well they’re taking care of the pasture and how much and quickly they are eating.

Coming up, Farming Forward in partnership with Organic Alberta and the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association will be having a Soil Health Summer Tour with renowned Soil Health Expert Joel Williams on July 29.