Ben Marcus Rules

 Way back in 1980 I worked on a sheep on a station in New Zealand, so I know that sheep are not the smartest animals in all Creation. Are goats smarter than sheep?
Without a doubt. Sheep tend to be more instinct-driven, moving as a unit and reacting to threats as a group. Goats are far more independent thinkers. They problem-solve, test boundaries, and learn from experience. This makes them more difficult to manage at times, but it also makes them incredibly effective for the type of work we do.

In a 2024 interview with Shoutout L.A., you described goats as “rascally.” Define “rascally.”
Rascally means you can’t turn your back on them for too long. If a goat sees an opportunity—whether it’s an open gate, an unattended backpack, or a low-hanging tree branch—they’re going to take it. They’re escape artists and troublemakers, but in the best possible way.

Are there goats that are finicky eaters - like Morris the Cat - and other goats that will eat anything and everything?
Absolutely. Some goats are picky, while others will eat just about anything green. It comes down to breed, personality, and experience. A seasoned brush goat knows what’s worth eating, while a young goat might take a nibble of something and decide it’s not worth the effort. But when they work as a herd, their natural competition for food means they eventually learn to eat a broad variety of vegetation.

I’ve seen what they can do to poison oak and blackberries and it’s gnar. Are there any flora goats absolutely refuse to eat even if you threaten to dock their pay?
Yes. Goats tend to avoid plants with strong toxins or unpalatable oils, like oleander, hemlock, and some members of the euphorbia family [Cypress spurge, Snow-on-the-mountain, Jatropha, Poinsettia, Flowering spurge]. They’ll also steer clear of certain mature trees unless there’s absolutely nothing else available. But when we move them into an area, we focus on the plants they excel at clearing— high-fuel invasives like mustard, thistle, and annual grasses.

You're About Us stated you had a hundred animals as of 2020. Has your herd increased since then?
Yes, embarrassingly, we haven’t updated the website in about five years.  We now manage over 1,000 goats and sheep, scaling up to meet the demand for fire mitigation, rotating them across multiple job sites in Southern and Central California.

How big is your herd? And is there a particular breed or genre of goat that is more effective at brush clearance?
Our best brush goats are Spanish and Boer crosses—they’re hardy, adaptable, and have the right combination of appetite and durability. We also mix in some hair sheep because they target different plant species and work well in tandem with the goats.

Young better than old? Male better than female?
Young goats are more energetic, but older goats are experienced and efficient. We like a mix. As for males versus females, we primarily run does (females) because they’re easier to manage and tend to have a more consistent diet. We keep some wethers (castrated males) for added size and browsing power, but intact males are generally more trouble than they’re worth.

Do you have names for all your animals?
No way. With 1,000+ goats, that would be impossible. But we do have a few standout characters with names—usually the ones that cause the most trouble.

Where is your property, and were you affected by the Thomas Fire?
We’re based in Ventura County. When the Thomas Fire hit, it was a wake-up call for everyone in the region. While we didn’t lose property, we saw firsthand how vulnerable our landscapes were. That fire was the catalyst that pushed us to start Ventura Brush Goats in early 2018.

How many goats did you start out with? And what was your first job?
We started small, with just a few dozen goats. Our first big job was in Ojai, where we worked on a property that had burned in the Thomas Fire. That was when we really saw how effective goats could be for fire mitigation, and it set the foundation for our business.

Can you detail the mistakes you've made and what you've learned to fine-tune this business?
There’s a long list. In the beginning, we underestimated how much infrastructure was needed—fencing, genetics, and predator protection all had steep learning curves. We learned the hard way that not all goats are suited for this work. Early on, we bought animals that weren’t acclimated to the brush, and they required far more management than we expected. Over time, we’ve refined our herd, our methods, and our logistics to be more efficient.

What areas do you enjoy working in the most?
Coastal hillsides and oak woodlands. They’re challenging but beautiful, and goats excel in those environments.

What is the oddest/wildest/most supernatural thing you have seen attending your goats?
Years ago, I was camping with my herd, before I had employees and mobile housing units. It was just me and my herding dog, sleeping out in the pasture. It was summertime and I had no shelter other than a sleeping bag. I found a scorpion as I began to enter my sleeping bag and thanked the stars that I saw it before disturbing it. 

Next thing I know, I was jolted awake by the sound of stampeding goat hooves and their alarm snorting sounds all around me. I jumped up and made towards the sound and came quite literally face to face with a large mountain lion holding a full grown goat by the neck, and another one dead beside it. I instinctively shouted at it, but it was unfazed. Without breaking eye contact, I groped for a rock, and my crouching motion caused the lion to turn and slink away, gracefully leaping over our 4-foot electric fence. It had dropped the goat that was in its mouth, and I was actually able to nurse that one back to full health. 

That was about seven years ago, and we have utilized Great Pyrenees and Anatolian livestock guardian dogs ever since. We haven’t lost any animals due to predatory wildlife since then, simply because the dog’s effective alarm barking keeps the lions and coyotes from coming too close.

Have you done many jobs around Malibu?
Yes, quite a few. Malibu is a high-risk fire area with a lot of rugged terrain, making it a perfect fit for our goats.

How much of your work is municipal or government, and how much is private?
It’s about 50/50. Cities, fire departments, and HOAs hire us for large-scale firebreaks, while private landowners bring us in to clear defensible space around their homes.

Do you think any amount of brush clearance could have prevented the Palisades Fire?
It wouldn’t have stopped it completely, but strategic grazing could have reduced its intensity. Fire needs fuel. The less fuel available, the less destructive a wildfire becomes.

If you were calling the shots in the Santa Monica Mountains, what would your brush clearance program be?
In a perfect world with adequate and a well-managed budget, I’d implement widespread targeted grazing in high-risk areas where lives and valuable property are at stake, particularly in canyons and along ridgelines where fires tend to spread rapidly. I’d also integrate grazing with controlled burns and mechanical clearing to create a layered defense, then allow all other native chaparral, oak woodland and coastal sage scrub ecosystems to remain untouched, aside from the occasional low-intensity prescribed burn, ideally every five years in wildland areas. 

Additionally, homes must be hardened. Through our Home and Range company www.homeandrangellc.com, we offer HIZ inspections, to help homeowners learn what they need to do to their specific property to make it maximally fire resilient. We look at the exterior of the home, the type of screen or mesh in the vents, the roof, gutters, exterior, 0-5 ft zone, 5-30 ft zone, 30-100 ft and more. I can confidently say that a neighborhood with properly-hardened homes and adequate vegetation management will survive a wildfire. 

The issue is that some homes were built decades ago and can be very costly to retrofit for fire. We provide an a la carte list for the homeowner so they can choose what retrofitting is within their budget. Often, there are simple solutions such as replacing combustible mulch with gravel or decomposed granite within the 0-5 ft zone. Homes must have metal mesh that is finer than 1/8th inch overall exterior vents!

How much space would you clear around an individual structure?
Minimum of 100 feet, more if the terrain is steep or heavily vegetated. Flame heights can be expected to reach 4x fuel height, and alignment of wind and terrain can push flames even longer, so 20’ tall vegetation can result in flames that fully extend over a 100’ fire break. 

How much of the Santa Monica Mountains would need to be cleared to make it all fire safe?
There’s no single answer, but a combination of strategic firebreaks, managed grazing, and prescribed burns could significantly reduce risk across thousands of acres. It’s important to reiterate the necessity of home-hardening; something like 80% of homes lost in wildfires are caused by ember ingress rather than direct flame-front.

Are there many places that you consider inaccessible to goats?
Very few. If we can get a fence around it, we can graze it.

People complain that California doesn't have proper forest management or brush management. I say firestorms are forest management and brush management. A natural process and humans are just in the way. Do you agree?
Low intensity fire is part of the natural cycle, but the problem is we’ve built homes in fire-prone areas without adjusting our management strategies. We can’t eliminate fire, but we can reduce its impact through smarter vegetation management. For many years, California had a policy of extinguishing every smoldering start, regardless of its threat to homes. A few decades ago, government agencies took the right to use prescribed fire as a land management tool away from the people like ranchers, agriculturalists and indigenous tribes by regulating or outright banning prescribed fire. The old-time ranchers I learned from coming up in this industry tell me stories of walking around their mountain pastures with a drip torch every so often, to keep things healthy up there. 

As part of the VCRCD’s Prescribed Burn Association, I’ve seen firsthand the positive effects of fire on our landscapes. Fire has always been an important tool and extinguishing it from the landscape is part of what has caused the intense build-up of fuels in SoCal. Our wildfires now are not beneficial or natural; where a low intensity lightning strike or prescribed fire might creep through the landscape, eliminating only the one-hour fuels (flashy fuels), these modern day wildfires are hotter than ever before, creating their own fire-weather, and killing native oaks and other perennials that would normally survive low-intensity fires. The ground is getting so blistering hot that resilient species that regrow from underground after fire are no longer surviving and type-conversion is occurring at an unprecedented rate. 

Fortunately, new bills such as SB 926 and SB 675 are being passed to help encourage the revitalization of prescribed fire and grazing in California. Fire professionals are winning the struggle to help our population learn the importance of taking an active management approach to our landscapes.

Are you surprised by how quickly the Santa Monica Mountains green up after a massive fire?
Not at all. The chaparral ecosystem is designed to recover fast. The problem is that invasive species like mustard and brome grasses take over and create even worse fire conditions the next season

Are there places burned by the Thomas Fire that are still scorched?
Most areas have regrown, but there are tens of thousands of acres where scorched oak and chaparral remain blackened and standing. Oaks that did survive are still dying every day due to the critical trunk and canopy damage they received. Just last week, an oak that was hollowed out by the Thomas Fire died and came crashing down across our neighbor’s driveway. 

Let’s say I own five acres up Winding Way and need them cleared. What would be the process, cost, and time table?
Five acres is actually our project minimum. For five acres of vegetation, we’d assess the terrain, often remotely, using geo-spatial mapping software, and send a proposal. Once we receive a mobilization deposit, we’d schedule the herd, fence the perimeter, and bring in around 280 sheep and goats (more for larger acres). Depending on the density of vegetation, it could take 4-7 days. Cost varies based on location, vehicle and water access, quality and quantity of vegetation but typically starts around $5,500-$8,000 for five acres. 

We have price breaks over 10 acres due to our reduced costs of staying on one project for longer. The reason five acres is our minimum is because the goats don’t like to load up and travel so often, they prefer to settle into a grazing cycle and relax for several days. We love when neighbors get together to combine efforts to create larger fuel breaks. We’ve seen neighbors that have never met come together over the goats!

SHEEP WORK, TOO

Paul Warson is a winemaker and General Manager of the Moraga Vineyard. He had this to say about using sheep to reduce noise and chemical pollution on the 17-acre vineyard tucked away in the hills and dales of Bel Air, with the Getty Center off in the distance.

We had about 150 sheep this year. We bring the sheep in just before bud break to avoid any damage to the new year’s growth. Goats are notorious for consuming nearly everything, and for us in a vineyard setting, that includes the vines themselves and our drip irrigation hose. 

The sheep take care of weeds and grasses with minimal disruption. With Weedwhackers, the amount of land that we have and the time it takes for us it's several times a year for weeks on end and that make for being a bad neighbor as far as I'm concerned. It makes me feel bad that these people who wanna enjoy the outside drinking their coffee or eating their breakfast are disturbed by the shrill wine of Weedwhackers off in the distance. It's just noise pollution.

And using sheep allows us to avoid the use of Round Up. It's not good for our employees. It's not good for our neighbors.

And sheep are natural fertilizers. And not to forget the added bonus of the sheep. They are doing us two favors. Knocking down our cover crop that she seeded over 25 years ago, they assist us in keeping fuel for wildfires down.

It’s a good deal all around.