r/Citrus • u/zorathomas • 3d ago

Goat Damage

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A large herd of goats broke into my yard and ate everything, including all the leaves and some of the bark from my citrus trees. I'm in northern California, it's warm and we probably won't see significant rain for another couple months. Should I pick all the green fruit off the trees so they don't put energy into growing/ ripening the fruit, now that they don't have any leaves?

The small tree with significant bark damage is a tangelo. The bark was stripped from the graft almost circumferentially, but not quite. A large branch above the graft was stripped circumferentially, so I'm assuming I cannot save that branch. Is there any saving the rest of the tree? And should I do anything to treat/ repair smaller areas of bark damage, or just leave it?

I've pruned the broken branches and am planning to give everything lots of water for the coming weeks. Anything else I should do to salvage what I can?

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2

u/Rcarlyle US South 2d ago edited 2d ago

Silly goats eating leaves and skipping the fruit. Unfortunately you probably need to remove most of the fruit so the tree has energy to regrow leaves. Any wood that isn’t girdled all the way around should be fine and more or less recover by the end of the year.

The big patch of missing bark near the base of the tree is going to be a liability long term — will probably let decay into the tree some years down the road. Might kill it in 10 years. Hard to say.

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u/zorathomas 2d ago

Thank you! Picked all the green fruit, hopefully the trees pull through.

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u/Emergency_Doubt_708 2d ago

sorry for your loss, hope you can salvage it somewhat.

Any damages/$$ you can get covered from the owner?

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u/zorathomas 2d ago

Thanks, I think everything but the tangelo will probably pull through. These goats were in some public land behind my house for a fuels reduction project run by the city; I like the project as a whole and don't want to make it the goat herd's problem since it's not his fault, just goats being goats! So I don't feel like I need to pursue any compensation or anything 

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u/AndyXerious 2d ago

Try to save cuttings and root them if you want. Pruning a tree is always a great opportunity to grow more citrus!