LAWRENCE, N.J. – A New Jersey power company operating a solar plant that powers The Lawrenceville School recently found a good way to cut its maintenance costs at the 30-acre facility: sheep.

Instead of shelling out $20,000 for landscape crews to come in to cut the grass under the site’s rows of solar panels, KDC Solar worked with the nearby Cherry Grove Farm to contract with 71 sheep to keep the grass groomed, NJ.com reports.

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The partnership in Lawrenceville is the second KDC Solar site to use sheep landscapers after a similar project at the company’s solar farms in Vineland.

The initiative works well with the boarding school’s priority of going green, and helps preserve the land for future agricultural use, school farm manager Jake Morrow told the news site.

“The best possible thing you could do for this as agricultural land is to have a diverse mix of grasses and forages and to have animals grazing,” Morrow said. “Twenty years from now, if we decided to pull up all the panels and do something else with the land, it’ll be better suited for agriculture than it would have been otherwise.”

“The land is getting better all the time,” he said.

The benefits of saving cash and reducing emissions made the decision an obvious win for the power company, KDC Solar vice president Robert Simalchik said.

“You’ve got carbon dioxide emissions, carbon monoxide emission” from traditional mowers, he said. “Every couple weeks, I’m out here making a stink. … With the sheep, the emissions are gone and the costs are a lot less.”

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Simalchik told Philly.com the company choose to work with sheep, rather than goats used by many municipalities to control invasive plants, because goats “will wreck this place” by jumping on the panels or eating wires.

The sheep, on the other hand, use the panels for shade, but otherwise ignore them as they follow the sun throughout the day.

Cherry Grove Farm owner Oliver Hamill told Philly.com the partnership shows “lands can be used in several ways and that solar fields should be built higher so you can graze under them successfully.”

Shepherd Ashley Shaloo brings the sheep fresh minerals and water at their new home away from home, and said the only real issue they’ve had is getting stuck at the end of the solar panel rows when they’re at full tilt.

“They have the run of the place,” Shaloo said. “They munch all day. They’re not getting grains so this is 100 percent of their carbs, 100 percent of their proteins.”

The sheep are expected to graze through October at the 6.1-megawatt solar farm, which also hosts roughly a dozen bee hives, then return in the spring.