This past Monday, goats arrived on campus from Wells Goat Farm near Asheville. They will spend the next four to six weeks munching their way through a 3.5-acre stand of kudzu in the college’s ecological preserve. The preserve is located on Dunmurray Road in northern Davidson.

Davidson student Rebecca McKee suggested the college adopt “goatscaping” to control its kudzu after seeing how effective it was at the Asheville School, which she attended. And the kudzu is apparently good for the goats as well. They like it so much, in fact, that Wells Farm proprietor Ron Searcy says they will eat the leaves and vines without destroying other plants in the area. Kudzu leaves are more than 20 percent protein.

Upon arrival midday Monday, the goats immediately went to work inside two recently fenced areas surrounding the college’s kudzu forest. The goat herd will also be accompanied by a dog, which will protect the goats from wild dogs during their stay at Davidson.

Searcy says Davidson College joins a growing list of governments, industries and even homeowners who are renting goats as an ecologically friendly and efficient means of controlling kudzu. Wells Farm has 300 goats, and hires most of them out for kudzu duty during the summer months.

Kudzu, which is native to Asia, was introduced in the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, according to the United States Forest Service. It arrived in the South several years later, becoming a popular ornamental vine, then a forage and erosion-control crop. In the Great Depression, the federal government paid farmers to plant it. First called “the miracle vine,” kudzu eventually came to be known as “the vine that ate the South.” It can grow at the rate of one foot per day, smothering flora, swallowing houses and blanketing the landscape.

Got your goat?

For more information about “goatscaping” or Wells Goat Farm, visit www.wellsfarmgoats.com.