This year’s journey for weed-eating goats to reach their usual stopover in Colorado Springs was as hairy as Santa’s ride on Christmas Eve.

Like the magic of the holidays, livestock trucking is not an exact science.

Drought conditions coupled with winter storms has adversely affected Lani Malmberg’s business, Goat Green LLC, which operates a base camp in Fort Collins and supplies 1,500 Cashmere goats for fire mitigation and landscape control in 15 Western states.

“The goats don’t know anything about the calendar,” she said Tuesday night, while staking temporary fencing near the community garden in Bear Creek Regional Park.

Last week, two-thirds of Malmberg’s momma and baby goats endured an icy drive out of Aspen in “a horrible storm,” in which the truck got stuck in 2 feet of snow. That meant Malmberg and her son each had to horse-trailer loads of 600 and 400 goats to Denver.

The change of plan left the goats penned up for 18 hours without food or water, Malmberg said.

After a five-hour drive from Carbondale, the crew arrived in Colorado Springs after the sun had set Tuesday.

The irritated goats bleated loudly before jumping out of a large, multi-story stock truck and heading for the creek for a long-awaited drink.

The herd normally arrives in late October, after the garden is put to bed, said John Poyzer, board member emeritus of the Bear Creek Garden Association.

But between other jobs, fickle weather and road closures, the crew got held up in October, November, and the first half of December.

“That’s only numbers on the calendar,” Malmberg said. “It was 70 degrees in Denver yesterday, so we’re right on time.”

This year’s delay means Malmberg and the 580 goats she traveled with will be spending Christmas in Colorado Springs.

But that’s OK, she said. They’re familiar with the place.

This is the 23rd year for the nonprofit Bear Creek Garden Association, which runs the Charmaine Nymann Community Garden on the west side, to raise $10,000 and hire the goats for fire mitigation.

“We’re part of the social fabric here,” Malmberg said.

Nearly all the adult goats have been to the site before, she said, and their “knowledge, experience and memory are their value.”

For 10 days, they’ll be munching on a salad bar of 20 acres surrounding the county park.

The animals remember where the good eating is and how to maneuver around the bicyclists and walkers that use the county park trails, she said.

The process is a marvel of nature, Malmberg said.

The goats eat dry timber and noxious weeds such as thistle, hemlock and teasel, poop out the waste and then stomp it into the ground — which decomposes and fertilizes the land.

“The drought is horrific in all these Western states, the soil is stressed and bare,” Malmberg said.

Under a weed management agreement with El Paso County Parks, the garden association pays for the goat herding service, in order to maintain an organic status, said Todd Hegert, one of nine association board members.

It’s easier than herding cats but harder than mowing or using herbicides.

Malmberg’s border collies, Banjo and Betty, are proficient at their job of corralling the herd to a specific quadrant of land each day.

Despite Wednesday’s horrific winds, the goats were busy working.

Volunteers wearing orange vests will be on the lookout for unleashed dogs to avert a problem that occurred in 2015, when loose dogs terrorized the goat herd to the point that Malmberg packed up and left early.

County officials are enforcing the leash law more often and can write tickets to offenders, said Karen Stith, one of nine garden association board members.

“These are working animals. They’re not pets, you don’t bring them a carrot,” she said.

Malmberg is considered the “guru of goats in the United States,” Hegert said.

“It’s an interesting nomadic life,” he said. “The goats come bounding out and know exactly what to do.”

Colorado Springs residents have been eager for the animals to arrive, he said.

“We’ve been getting lots of inquiries,” Hegert said. “It’s a big community event, particularly for families and kids.

“They’re such cute animals and have such personality, with the facial expressions and noises they make.”