Grazing goats fatally stabbed in Coeur d’Alene

Three of the goats used by the city of Coeur d’Alene for weed control were stabbed at a city well, leaving one nearly decapitated and a second mortally wounded.

Police are investigating the animal abuse and asking the public for help in solving the crime, which occurred Monday night or Tuesday morning at the Honeysuckle well on Kathleen Avenue near Coeur d’Alene High School.

“It’s awful,” said Jim Markley, superintendent of the water department.

Quintin Forte, who rents out the goats to property owners, removed his remaining goats from the fenced well site. One of the injured animals had to be put down, and another was seriously hurt, he said.

“I never would have thought in a million years I would have a problem like this, you know,” said Forte, who runs Green Goat Rentals from his farm near Hayden Lake.

He placed 16 goats inside the 4-acre well site Monday at 5 p.m. The Boer breed animals are about 2 feet tall and weigh 30 to 50 pounds.

“This was the last job that we were doing,” he said Tuesday. “I dropped them off last night and I was going to pick them up this afternoon.”

Police and animal control officers found the dead and wounded goats Tuesday morning. The fence is locked and the assailant would have had to climb over it to reach the animals, police said.

The city began renting the goats in 2012 as an inexpensive alternative to herbicides.

“This is elegant, simple and green,” Markley said at the time. “Put a bunch of goats in there, and three days later the weeds are gone.”

The city parks department also has used the goats to control vegetation on Tubbs Hill. The animals eat a wide variety of weeds and plants, including blackberry bushes, bramble, English ivy, nettles, poison oak and poison sumac.

The goats have been popular with Coeur d’Alene residents. Families often visit and feed them when the animals appear in their neighborhoods each summer.

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality granted the city a waiver to use goats at nine well sites after water department officials convinced regulators that goats don’t pose the same health threat as cows, whose manure can contaminate groundwater with the E. coli bacteria.

Anyone with information on the attack is asked to call the Coeur d’Alene Police Department at (208) 769-2320 or email the tip line at  policetips@cdaid.org.