O Christmas tree, how tasty are thy branches
It’s a post-holiday meal only a goat could love
A new afterlife of sorts is sprouting for area Christmas trees.
More and more, people are skipping curbside pickup offered by municipalities and instead taking their trees to a different source: the mouths of goats.
What may appear to some as remnants of holiday cheer is a good source of Vitamin C for goats, who devour the needles, branches and even the bark.
“They eat it down to a skeleton that you would think came out of the desert,” said Carla Roselli of Colchester, who owns 10 Nigerian Dwarf goats.
Last year, Roselli drove all over town picking up Christmas trees that Colchester residents had left at the end of their driveways. This year, she decided to focus on a certain area of town and has a pickup schedule set for Saturday. She collected about 20 trees last year and expects to have a similar haul this year.
But Roselli doesn’t let the goats feast on the trees all at once. She gives them a tree every week or two — tying the tree to a fence and rotating it until the goats strip it bare.
“I don’t want them to eat only that. It’s more like a chocolate sundae for them. It’s not a basis of their nutrition,” she said.
In southeastern Connecticut and beyond, people are taking to social media in search of discarded Christmas trees to feed their goats and other farm animals.
“Between them and the chickens they have a ball,” said Laura Kelly of Ledyard, who owns six goats.
In the past, Kelly said she’s relied on word of mouth to solicit trees, but this year she listed the address of her Three Maples Farm on the Ledyard Community Forum for people to drop them off. She said she hasn’t received any trees yet, but she suspects that’s because most people wait until after New Year’s to take their trees down.
Kelly said she can’t take every tree. Those sold at big box stores are often treated with chemicals, which make goats sick, so she usually only accepts those grown at local tree farms. They must be free of all ornaments and tinsel, too, she said, and not sprayed with fire retardant or other chemicals.
Kevin DiFilippo, who owns Big Red Farmhouse in Ledyard, knows firsthand what happens when goats ingest toxic chemicals. Earlier this year, three of his goats, who were all pregnant, ate poisonous trimmings placed in their enclosure by landscapers. Eight of the 10 baby goats died.
That didn’t deter DiFilippo from asking for Christmas trees for his goats for the third year in a row. On Monday, his Nubian goats were enjoying the latest drop-off. DiFilippo said he got about six trees the first year he put a call out. Last year, that “exploded” to 33 trees. He attributed the growth to increased awareness and focus on recycling and reusing products.
Roselli of Colchester agrees. She said people spend good money to cut down Christmas tree, only to take it down a short while later, “and then what?” As one woman put it to her, she’s giving her tree a second life.