Black walnut husks

I did a cursory thread search but I don't think I saw any threads on this topic.

We have a few black walnut trees around and I'm wondering if the husks of the nuts are a good forage for goats. I would not have a problem collecting and hulling the nuts and taking the husks as supplemental feed to the goats. I know there are some compounds associated with black walnuts that are allelopathic. But would this have any value for parasite management? Would goats eat the husks? Husk them green or ripe? I'd love to know what experienced goat herders think.

really good question if you can find an analysis for the hulls ask a vet , there are a bunch of good goat forums and that would also be a place to ask there must be folks with goats and walnut trees
we had goats but they were not penned by the walnuts so I never noticed if they would eat them . now we have way more walnuts ( due to the kids and husband using them in a spud gun !) But we do not have goats for now .
Sue

I'm not an experienced goat herder, but I do know that Black Walnut Husks are super high in tannic acid. I am a hide tanner of goat hides so I look for tannic plants and know a lot about them. Whereas I believe herders look to keep their herds off tannic plants, and balance their total tannic input, because tannins bind with proteins and is considered an anti-nutrient.

According to this site http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/highchem.html juglans nigra (black walnut) has 147,000 ppm of tannic acid in the fruit (aka the husk).

I was searching for information on processing Black Walnut husks and happened upon this thread.

At least one source says Black Walnut is toxic to goats:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Goats/Poisonous_Plants

One should differentiate somewhat between feeding leaves and feeding nut husks. Black Walnut husks are used as a human parasiticide and at least one source says to use it for worming goats:
http://www.fiascofarm.com/herbs/wormer.htm

The husks are very different in composition from the leaves, although some of the same constituents are present. I would reserve feeding Black Walnut husks for medicinal purposes only.

Which brings me to my question: What is the best way to process Black Walnut husks to retain their medicinal qualities and achieve long-term (one or two years) storage.

I think goats tolerate, in fact require and benefit from, a fair level of tannin in their diet. Just naturally because they do prefer deciduous and evergreen leaves, twigs and bark to just about any other food. If I had an abundance of Black Walnut leaves, I would cautiously feed them to my goats, in moderate amounts, to supplement their normal ration.

I own goats and I know that it is not a good thing for them to have, the leaves aren't great either.....horses are even more susceptible and can die from using the wood sawdust in their bedding. Amish here will Rarely do walnut furnuture because the dust gets used in the stalls. The guys that do will reroute the sawdust extra or to the side rather than add that dust to the hopper.

Hello. I have been keeping a small tribe of angora goats for a few years now and we used the "Molly's Herbals" worming formula for the first time this past summer. We only needed to worm our goats once all year, which was a drastic improvement on the previous year. The formula included black walnut and wormwood. We will continue to add pastures in order to increase our rotating and reduce our need for such worming, but until then I am interested to know if there are folks out there gathering black walnut and feeding it as a wormer.