Western Quebec goats get old Christmas trees as tasty holiday treat

Jennifer Madore and her partner Pierre Faucher have a novel use for discarded Christmas trees: feeding them to hungry western Quebec goats.

The Luskville, Que., couple have made it an annual tradition to collect trees from their neigbhours and deliver them to a goat farm about 40 kilometres away in Wakefield, Que. 

On a bright Sunday morning, Madore explained that the initiative started modestly in 2019, when she gave her old Christmas tree to a goat farm after realizing the hardy ruminants could consume conifers.

Since then, she's scaled up the operation, first by collecting her neighbours' festive firs and more recently by posting an offer on Facebook to pick up trees around the region.

This year she plans to collect 80 trees, relying on a notebook filled with names and addresses, colour-coded by area to efficiently plan the route. 

While she and Faucher collect and deliver the trees on their own time, Madore said it's worth it just to see the enthusiasm with which the goats devour the evergreens.

Unlike sheep, goats are able to thrive on a diet of course and fibrous plants. 

"The goats adore them. They eat them like piranhas. They attack it, they make funny sounds ... it's absolutely lovely to watch them, they really lose their minds," she said.

"It's a lovely way to end the year — and start the year." 

In a video Madore filmed at Apple Road goat farm in Wakefield last year, long-eared Nubian goats eagerly nibbled on the saplings, leaving only bare skeletons stripped of needles, bark and the smaller branches.

Madore said the grateful owner has previously gifted her goat milk soap in appreciation for providing the goats with fresh food during the winter, when the nannies are pregnant.

Down the street from Madore, Stan Cain carried his tree across his snow-covered yard to be collected.

His neighbours' initiative was a perfect example of localism and recycling, he said.

"The trees are produced in Quebec. We're happy to buy [them] from a local provider. And then the goats are from Wakefield," Cain said.

"When we're finished with the tree, it goes off to the goats, they eat it. The droppings go back to the ground. That's a pretty damn good example of circular economy."

In the nearby western Gatineau neighbourhood of Aylmer, Bonnie Corriveau said she was delighted to give a happy ending to her Christmas tree, rather than disposing of it curbside.

"There's something a little bit sad about just putting it on the edge of your driveway," she said.

Feeding it to goats, in contrast, "enhanced the experience of having the tree," she said.

"So we'll be happy to do it again next year."