Goats eat anything; even rusty tin cans, it is claimed, so you don't want them wandering around your tree grove, as one farmer found out recently.

A goatherder has been fined for letting his ‘munchers’ into an poplar plantation where they caused 24,124 euros of damagie by devouring the bark off the trees. Consequenty, a provincial, appeals court has order the goatherder to cough up. And this was not the first time he had let his herd of ravenous cabras onto somebody’s land.

The judge also put a restraining order on the goat owner from approaching within 200 metres of the other man’s land. The trees were so damaged that they could not be sold: poplar wood (populus) is primarily marketed for the production of plywood, but also for other uses such as furniture and pallet manufacturing.

All this happened back in 2021 in a municipality close to the city of Granada. The four-legged locusts made two incursions onto the poplar plantation, without permission from the landowner.

When it first went to court, the goatherder was found guilty and fined nine-months at six euros a day
and had the court order to keep his damned goats out of the poplar-tree plantation.

Feeling that he and his goats had been unfairly treated, the goatherder lodged an appeal on the grounds that he was not present at the first trial. However the appeals court threw this out as his lawyer and the prosecution lawyer had agreed to go ahead without his presence. Futhermore, the appeals court pointed out that the accused had never justified his absence from the trial.

So, let this be a lesson to anybody with an olive or almond grove who thought that letting goats onto the land would be a better idea than using a strimmer: goats, no; sheep, yes.

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: Goatherder, Goats, Bark, Poplar Trees, Damage, Appeal Reject, Fined

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