Caleb Slade
The Goat Guy
Wildlife & Conservation
Targeted grazing provides a plethora of conservation opportunities, from weed reduction to wildlife habitat enhancement, fire prevention and more!
Social
Our favorite outcome: those silly goats produce a 100% increase in joy 🙂
Goals
Specifically, this project will allow for the targeted management of vegetation, including noxious weed control without the use of herbicides, manipulation of vegetation to increase native plant diversity and improve habitat for upland game birds, and to support regenerative agriculture. Overall, this project demonstrates the powerful results that using goats in combination with virtual fence can achieve as a means to impact wildlife habitat and fisheries positively.
Ranch
Caleb Slade, The Goat Guy, LLC, operates throughout Eastern Idaho with 40 goats enrolled in the Virtual Fence Conservation Partnership. The goats are contracted for targeted grazing projects resulting in a myriad of benefits to lands in eastern Idaho, including Fremont, Teton, Bonneville, and Madison Counties. Conservation benefits of targeted grazing are unique to each project but have the potential to positively impact migratory big game habitat, game and non-game bird habitat, native trout fisheries, and other wildlife and conservation values.
Existing projects aim toward targeted grazing of hounds tongue, eliminating the use of herbicides, regenerative agriculture, weed mitigation, improving soil health, and reducing fuel levels in the tree lines to reduce fire risk and improve habitat for deer, moose, pheasants, turkeys and waterfowl.
Project Collaborators
Partnership Journal
Partner since April 2026 · 2 entries
April 8, 2026
RCF and PERC visited Caleb Slade’s goat grazing operation on April 8, 2026. This site visit was conducted to support the development of a conservation monitoring plan for Slade, who uses targeted goat grazing to manage weeds, shrubs, and fine fuels on client properties. After viewing his upcoming client’s properties and discussing strategies to monitor weed and shrub cover reduction through grazing, Slade took us to see the goats in action. He demonstrated the goats actively grazing within a virtual fence boundary and explained how grazing patterns are adjusted to meet vegetation management objectives. He also provided an overview of how he uses the NoFence application to monitor animal location, adjust boundaries, and manage grazing intensity in real time. Through this visit, we were able to better understand how Slade uses virtual fencing to accomplish his conservation objectives and how it impacts his operational decision-making.
Our favorite outcome: those silly goats produce a 100% increase in joy 🙂
April 27, 2026
RCF and PERC all visited two properties on schedule to be grazed by Caleb Slade’s goats. This site visit was conducted to begin collecting data on invasive weeds and to see the goats’ progress on their current site. We began by revisiting a site from our initial visit to see the difference between pre- and post-grazing. Afterward, we went to the second site to conduct line point intercept monitoring for houndstongue before the goats had grazing access to get a baseline measurement of the species’ cover. We will repeat this measurement after the goats have grazed the property to monitor any reduction in houndstongue.