Bringing back an Ozark farm with Kikos
Why Kikos fit a low-input restoration system in the Missouri Ozarks
By Nicole Voracka
In the Missouri Ozarks, it doesn’t take long for open ground to disappear. If a pasture is left alone, brush comes first, then young trees, and before long the old farm begins to look like forest again. That is the story of our place.
My husband and I raise Kikos and other meat goats in the Missouri Ozarks, where we are restoring an old, abandoned farm to productive use. Farmed until around the 1960s, it was later left to grow over until the pastures became thick with brush and crowded timber.
Even after all those years, the land still remembers what it used to be. We use historic aerial photos from
www.historicaerials.com along with clues on the ground — old stone walls, faded fence lines and old trails —t o identify which parts of the woods were once open. Those are the areas we focus on first.
Once sunlight reaches the ground again, seeds that have been dormant for decades begin to respond. But the real engine of that restoration is our goats.
Goats first
In summer, we use electric fencing and polywire to make temporary paddocks in overgrown areas that were once pasture, then let the goats go to work. Their first job is clearing the understory — brush, saplings, vines and regrowth.
The nastier the vegetation, the happier they are. If it has
Part of the clearing process is cutting trees to open up pasture — the goats do the tree-trimming.
thorns, even better. This opens the paddock for the next step.
Here come the chainsaws
Once the brush is knocked back, we start thinning trees — just a few trees per day for the goats to browse. We are not trying to clear everything. We are trying to shape the future of the stand.
The goal is to move these areas back toward open pasture, oak savanna and silvopasture — land with enough sunlight to grow forage, but still enough good trees to provide mast, shade and long-term value. That means removing unhealthy, crooked, crowded or undesirable trees while leaving the best ones to grow.
This part of the process is where the goats and chainsaws work together. We cut the trees and the herd immediately gets to work
What the goats choose Watching what the goats eat has taught
us a lot. When fresh-cut trees hit the ground, they run to the red oaks first, which they prefer over the white oaks. They also love elm, red bud, sassafras, autumn olive and dogwood. Hickory and pawpaw are much less popular.
Kiko goats are good at sorting through a mixed environment and balancing from what is available. That ability to utilize varied browse is exactly what makes them useful on land that is halfway between forest and pasture.
Of course, just because the goats like something does not mean we automatically
stripping off leaves and tender bark. It turns a problem tree into useful forage and helps make the thinning process pay off right away.
The left photo shows the challenge we faced in reclaiming a long abandoned farm. At right, the goats and chainsaws have opened up the land. 26 Goat Rancher | May 2026
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