Mow the lawn? Not when you’ve an alpaca handy

Not so long ago the chichi suburban garden was alive with the sounds of scratching chickens, with many boasting fresh eggs for breakfast. They also helped to keep the grass down, their owners discovered.

Neighbours weren’t so mad on the set-up however, especially those who had to suffer a rooster crowing at daybreak. Some may even have conspired with the urban foxes to help them feast on the fowl.

And feast on them they did, depleting stock levels and puncturing the farmyard dream for many. Meanwhile, the grass continued to grow and many homeowners reluctantly returned to lawnmowing duties. But a select few have taken a much more creative approach to helping keep the grass down.

Charles Lambert and Ronan Daly fell into animal husbandry when they bought a three-bay, two-storey-over-basement glebe house in Co Longford.

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Built circa 1800, Kilglass House had water ingress from not one but three underground streams and was in a "falling down condition", according to the lads whose dramatic refurbishment was documented in the Hugh Wallace-fronted Great House Revival for RTÉ television. It had all the narrative arcs a producer could want. They went over budget, double the amount they had anticipated, even with a grant from the Longford Heritage Office.

The plan was to take in guests to get some badly needed money in. But the garden and surrounding lands, eight acres in total, were completely overgrown. In a Covid era it was a neighbour, Darragh Kelly, a farmer whom Lambert ran into in the village, that suggested they get a pair of nanny goats to eat the overgrown vegetation.

Before they could respond he had purchased them and sent the couple a picture of the ladies lording it up on the property’s front steps.

“We went in blindly,” says Daly. “I had a pet cat as a kid and Charles had had a dog but that was the height of our animal husbandry skills.”

While the nannies made a good attempt at clearing the fields – they love briars and even the Christmas tree – the boys thought they could do with another couple of hungry mouths to devour it all.

“Why don’t you breed instead of buying them?” another farmer friend Noel Newman suggested offering to lend them his billy goat. The nannies were pregnant in no time. The couple were shopping for groceries in Ballymahon when they got the call to say the nannies had gone into labour.

“It was mortifying. There was no planning,” Lambert admits.

“I was terrified,” says Daly. Four kids were born. Newman revived one, since named after him, with a hot toddy of warm port wine and glucose.

Then the goats started producing milk, up to five litres of the stuff per day.

Ever practical, Daly ordered a milking machine online but got a cow-sized model rather than one that was goat appropriate so he had to learn how to milk them by hand. Cue another frantic internet search to find out how.

"It was a bit like a Laurel and Hardy film," Lambert recalls. Daly picked up the knack by watching YouTube tutorials. "I learned everything off the internet." He's now making cheese. You can stay overnight for €70 per room, and order an evening meal, €28 per person, where the cheese is served after dinner.

Lawnmower-replacement verdict "The goats didn't limit their dining out to the overgrown shrubbery. They've been dining out on the topiary and roses. They've destroyed everything."

Jane Kennedy has a pair of alpacas as pets and lawnmowers. She lives on the outskirts of Waterford city in a house with about an acre of garden and a separate field that is about an acre in size.

What prompted her purchase? It was about six years ago and two of her three children were still in the local primary school, a school where most came from a farming background and had lambs or calves at home. Her youngest, Fred, then about seven years old, came home one day asking when they were going to get an exotic animal. She thought about peacocks following a visit to Fota Wildlife Park. Her husband Mark thought it was a crazy idea. This prompted her daughters to start searching for exotic animals on Done Deal and within minutes announced that there was a pair of alpacas for sale for €354. When she called to get more information about them she was told they also keep the grass down. To Fred it sounded far more fun than owning some local lambs.

The family, minus Mark who was working in the US, then sat down and started comparing the pros and cons of an alpaca versus a couple of lambs, inputting it all into a spreadsheet.

“They’re lighter on the foot, don’t break up the ground in the same way as a donkey or sheep would and before I knew it we had them booked,” Kennedy recalls. The price turned out to be on a per animal basis and it was recommended that she buy at least two – the alpaca is a herd animal and likes company. She had to also invest in sheep fencing to corral them in.

By the time Mark came home she had already transferred ownership and given them new names. One is Pablo Emilio Escobar, after the Colombian drug lord.

“He is brown, with a camel-like face and lives on his nerves.”

The other is Phil Humphrey Dunphy, after the character in TV show Modern Family.

“He is confident and nosey. There was no going back. I had fallen head over heels in love with them,” she says.

Most of the time they're peaceful and make humming sounds.

"They spit occasionally, when they get a fright, which they do when they look through the window and see their reflection in the TV screen."

Lawnmower-replacement verdict "The lawn is like a golf course."

Pancake is Collie Ennis’s rescue tortoise. The Greek or spur-thighed tortoise gets through a lot of lawn and has a particular penchant for dandelions.

“She keeps the grass down and eats all the weeds I don’t want,” says the host of the Critter Shed podcast and research associate with the zoology department at Trinity College. He has built a run for her, which extends to about one metre square in size that he lays on the part of the lawn that needs a “mow”.

The run includes a corner with shade and a water bowl. Measuring about a foot long she is big enough not to get attacked by gulls or herons but Ennis still keeps an eye on her while she is outdoors.

Every few days he moves the run to another patch working his way around the lawn, which extends to about 35sq m. She is very useful for keeping the grass in check. “You don’t see the weeds coming up and if you do you just have to move her more regularly,” he says.

It's handy since his two teenage children, Seán (16) and Mia (14), are not that keen on mowing the lawn.

"The tortoise moves more than they do."

Pancake is a teenager too. Ennis has her about eight years. She doesn’t have the typical brown shell of her breed. It’s half-brown and bumpy at the back as a result of metabolic bone disease, a reptile form of osteoporosis, he explains.

You can buy from a specialist reptile shop or the Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals but before you rush out he cautions that a tortoise is more of a commitment than a dog because while a dog can live about 15 years this reptile can live for a long, long time.

"Its something you may pass on to your kids and even grandkids."

Lawnmower-replacement verdict "She is very useful for keeping the grass in check."