Are you looking for a mower for your garden? What if you skip the electrical appliances and rent a goat or sheep instead? No, it’s not a joke. Companies such as “Une ferme chez vous” or “Greensheep” offer you this somewhat unusual choice, bringing an ancestral agricultural practice up to date: eco-grazing.
Pasture animals such as goats, horses or cattle graze. So if you feed your lawn the right way, these critters can mow it for free: this is called eco-grazing. This ancestral practice was abandoned in favor of mowers and other electrical appliances… but it’s starting to make a comeback in certain regions.
And for good reason: completely natural, it allows you to maintain a green space without using phytosanitary products. In addition, it offers a healthy space for animals, but above all a means of survival. This is precisely the aim of the Bearn association Les Tondeuses sur Pattes, which collects donkeys and sheep destined for slaughter.
Companies committed to animal welfare
These thriving companies also answer some ethical questions, especially when it comes to animal welfare. As the website Les Pâturages du littoral states: “talking about renting sheep seems to indicate that it is possible to put animals in a space and they will survive. But that is not the case: you have to visit the sites regularly, manage the hay and straw, take care if necessary, clean the drinking troughs. Sheep management requires expertise, know-how and that’s the whole point of being a professional in eco grazing”, the founders argue on their site. Instead of ‘rental’, the latter prefers to speak of ‘green space maintenance services’.
This is also the niche of GreenSheep, which conducts a preliminary survey of the land to ensure the absence of toxic products for the sheep and provides fencing, shelter and supervision of the animals by a local herder.
(ETX Daily Up)