biomass production. The findings of the study would assist in suggesting recommendations to the pastorals of the area with respect to economically viable means of suppressing woody species proliferation.
Study site
The study was conducted at Bathurst research farm. Bathurst research farm is a government satellite research farm found in the town Bathurst. The town of Bathurst is located in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
Experimental approach
The approach to the study was to establish a field trial with goats and occasional burning during mid-winter and dry-summer periods in the Coastal Thornveld. Responses of both herbaceous and woody plants to the treatments will be monitored. This study was conducted on an on-going long-term research trial in Bathurst Research Farm.
Experimental design and treatment
Treatments of the experiment included: Winter-Fire, Summer-Fire, Goats and Winter-Fire, Goats and Summer-Fire, Goats and Control. The experimental design is a complete randomized design with six treatments and each treatment replicated twice. Twelve field plots of 60 m by 30 m were laid down on the experimental site to represent six treatments. All the plots were separated by a goat proof fence tied on a barbed wire fence of 1.4 m in height. The twelve treatments were randomly allocated to the 3600 m2 or 0.36 hectare field plots. Treatments applied in the trial were virtually follow-up treatments after mechanical control with a Bosvark machine in the year 2000. Two fixed transects of 30 m in length where changes in the woody and herbaceous species were monitored were also randomly placed on each 3600 m2 field plot. Table 1 shows the treatments applied to the experiment.
Goat treatment
In the experiment, goats were rotated between goat plots (Daskin et al. 2016) to simulate an ever-present browsing situation in the practical farming environment. The grazing capacity of the experimental site was almost 0.3 ha/small stock unit (SSU), which translated to a stocking rate of 3.3 ha/SSUs (Du Toit, 2016). The stocking rate of the goats in the goat treatments was tripled to 9 ha/SSUs which translated to 3 goats per 3600 m2 (0.36 ha) plot. Despite ensuring social being of browsing goats in these small plots, this escalated stocking rate was in turn ensuring grazing pressure that will quickly impact on bush component (Du Toit 2016; Sikosana and Gambiza 2016). Goats were moved from one plot to another whenever the available browse was depleted to a level that caused goats to graze more than enough.
Goats followed by dry-summer and winter fires
In these two treatments, goats were first used to graze the plots to open them for the accumulation of grass species and, thereafter, followed by burning. Head fires were applied during the mid-summer drought (Goat Summer-Fire treatment) and another fire during the conventional burning season (Goat Winter-Fire). A hot fire of at least 2500 kg/ha of grass fuel was utilized to control bush species (Mitchell et al. 2012). Fire was applied only once
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Grassroots
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Vol. 17, No. 3
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Table 1: Treatments applied in the experiment.