BOSTON — Boston is deploying a team of landscaping goats to chomp down on weed-choked city land this summer.

The city is renting eight goats to graze on a city-owned golf course and another four at a wild landscape area. They will eat poison ivy, buckthorn, Japanese knotweed and other invasive plant species clogging the land, said Ryan Woods, a spokesman for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department.

“Goats eat everything. It’s one of the natural things that they do, and they’re able to digest these things that are harmful to humans,” Woods said. Plus they’re cheaper and quieter than lawnmowers, he added – and they drop natural fertilizer along the way.

The goats will be split into herds of four, each of which can clear up to a third of an acre per week. One herd will graze on a wild landscape in the Hyde Park neighborhood for four weeks, starting July 6. Afterward, they’ll join two other herds working at the George Wright Golf Course for six weeks, starting July 20.

The goal is to make overgrown areas more inviting to visitors, Woods said.

The goats will live at those sites until they finish their work, surrounded by solar-powered electric fences that keep them in and predators out. They’ll also be fed hay and water to supplement their diet.

Renting the goats from Duxbury-based Goatscaping Co. will cost about $11,000. The money comes from city fundraising, not taxes.

Residents and visitors shouldn’t expect any nuisance from the new neighbors, said Elaine Philbrick, co-founder of Goatscaping.

“The goats are very quiet, and both their bodies and their bile waste are odorless,” she said. They’re “extremely friendly,” she said.

Boston started using goats last year, after a group of Hyde Park youths proposed the idea to Mayor Martin Walsh.

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