FLORENCE — Bob Cellucci had a problem. The chair of the homeowners association for houses on Cardinal Way in Florence, Cellucci realized one of the street’s detention ponds, used to collect stormwater runoff following heavy rains to prevent flooding on the property, had been neglected and overgrown with vegetation, making it difficult to retain water that eventually flows into a nearby river.

Cellucci had looked into hiring an engineering firm to remake the detention pond, but the process would have been costly for the small HOA, which collects a total of $7,250 a year from the street’s 29 homes. But then Cellucci came up with a rather different idea.

“The mower that I was going to have to rent was called a ‘billy goat mower,’” Cellucci said. “And then I was like, oh, goats … I wonder if the goats would eat this?”

Cellucci and his family had become familiar with having goats around the house, thanks to a friendship with Chip Parsons, the owner of Parsons Farms in Hadley. Cellucci’s oldest child, 11-year-old Anna, helps out on the Parsons Farm, and the family occasionally brought home baby goats to help nurture them in cases where they are rejected by the mother.

With that in mind, Cellucci managed to borrow six female goats — named Brownie, Mousse, Twinkie, Cookie, Taffy and Truffle — from Parsons and brought them down to the detention pond, containing them using a solar-powered electric fence. After a little more than two weeks on the job, the goats managed to clear most of the vegetation on the outer layer of the detention pond, as they continue to work their way inward.

“It’s environmentally friendly, and it’s good for the kids,” said Cellucci, who often brings Anna and his two other children, 8-year-old Pete and 5-year-old Joey, down to see the goats. “If you’re around animals, you have to be patient. It teaches responsibility, patience, all these things.”

Cellucci isn’t the first person to think of using goats as a mowing service. Across Massachusetts, there are several agencies where goats can be hired to fill landscaping needs, such as Chompers Goatscaping in Pepperell and Goats to Go in Georgetown, both towns located in the eastern part of the state. But Cellucci also acknowledged that replacing modern machinery with farm animals isn’t always the most efficient method.

“I wouldn’t suggest this approach for everyone,” Cellucci said. “You can leave them for a night, but you can’t go on vacation, leaving them out here. You do have to constantly check up on them.”

But the six goats have taken a liking to their temporary home, having grown accustomed to their new diet after previously dining on hay back at the farm. They’ve even befriended the dogs that live on an abutting property (the dogs, Cellucci said, help scare away any predators that get too close to the pond). Cellucci plans to keep the goats around until the fall before returning them to Parsons Farm.

Other residents of the neighborhood, and other members of the neighborhood’s HOA, have greeted the goats with enthusiastic approval.

“Now that I see this, it’s working perfectly as designed,” said Brandon Zwirek, a new resident of the neighborhood who will formally join the HOA in September. “We don’t have to deal with an engineering firm anymore, we can just take this natural approach and it’ll be fine.”

For Cellucci, the best part of having the goats around is the joy it gives his children to be around them, and the values taking care of animals teaches them.

“The biggest thing is that the animals bring out the best in the kids, as far as their patience, their sense of responsibility and ownership,” he said. “If they’re ever bored, I just say, go check on the goats.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.