Sally Hurst

My climate/terrain is so very different from yours, (I am on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge mountains) so there are plants that I just haven't had any experience with. Chinese Elm is one of them. But my personal policy is not to plant anything invasive unless I am sure that some animal on this farm will eat it, and I take a set of garden clippers with me on our walks to cut down/back any non-native species I come across. The goats look forward to this activity <g>.

I concur with the blackberry plant recommendation. In fact, I don't know a berry bush they don't like. Mine like pine needles, especially this time of year, when green things are hard to come by, but they don't eat the pine bark. Pine (along with a number of other plants) is a natural dewormer. Oak leaves and nuts are dewormers as well, because of the tannins they contain, but be careful that the goats don't overindulge. And not only do goats like poison oak, but they go crazy for poison ivy. Mine hunt it down, especially in the spring. No, it does not effect them at all, but I get the rash on my forearm from contact with their bellies when I milk. As for pecans, they will eat leaves and nuts. (I had sheep who would stand under a pecan and listen for nuts to fall.) Yes, they have eaten a hops vine. That happened (accidentally) in the summer while it was still growing.

My goats really enjoy eating cedar trees after the trees are more than 3' tall, and especially when they are in milk, which makes sense since cedars need calcium to grow. They like dogwood after it flowers, honeysuckle after it is touched by frost, floribunda (wild) roses when they are growing, wisteria leaves but not vines, mimosa tree leaves, bark, and flowers, grape vines and leaves, privet hedge, mulberry leaves and bark, and almost all of the plants in my husband's garden except tomatoes, strong smelling herbs, gourds, and broccoli.

There are three plants that grow in my area that are truly poisonous to goats AND that they will willingly eat (choke cherry as discussed before, mountain laurel, and bracken fern) and I have made a point to be able to recognize them, so as long as it isn't one of those, I let goats try it. (There are all sorts of plants that get listed as poisonous that they don't want anyway (holly, vinca, ink berry.) Since my goats have the choice not to eat them, I don't worry about those.) I have seen all kinds of plants that my goats regularly eat on "poisonous to goats" lists because they are a problem under very specific circumstances, so check with a goat keeper in your area to see which ones you really need to absolutely avoid. And it would be a good idea to keep both baking soda and activated charcoal on hand for any emergencies.

Sometimes it takes a while for a goat to become willing to try new foods. I bought a doe from a farm that had no pasture, so when she came to my house and saw the green stuff on the ground, she didn't know what to do with it. She spent several weeks watching the rest of the herd before she tried some, but now, six years later, she is my most adventurous eater.

My county fair has a goat exhibit every year where they take one of those pre-built wooden sheds (with asphalt shingles) and build ramps or steps up to each of the eves. The goats climb up the steps/ramp, onto the roof, and down the other side. Their steps are made of small boulders on one side, and a wooden ramp on the other, but you could use any number of other material. (Do keep in mind how you might want to clean the whole system, as you can be sure they will poo on it.) You could even include a rough section to help wear down their hooves so you don't have to trim as often. The goats seem to really enjoy it, and so do the people watching.

As for food scraps, beware of too much sugar, and too many brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, etc.)

It sounds like you are trying to do your best for these goats, and I applaud you for it.

Bloat CAN happen in goats, but it is more of a cow and sheep problem. Any time you switch an ruminate's (an animal with a four-chambered stomach, like cows, sheep, and goats) food you need to give them an adjustment period. Ruminates rely on bacteria that live in their stomach to help with digestion. If they have been eating one food exclusively (say, hay) and you give them a large amount of another (say, grain) they won't have enough of the bacteria that helps digest the new food and it can get slowed down in their digestive tracts and, essentially, rot. Which causes problems, as you might guess. This is what happens when goats have endotoximia aka. over-eating disease. If you give a ruminate a small amount of the new food, gradually increasing the amount over several days, it gives their digestive tracts time to grow enough of the bacteria to help digest that food, and therefore, no endotoximia.

When going from hay to grass, the problem is water. Hay doesn't have much, and new spring grass has an abundance. This can cause 1) runny feces - which can get out of control and cause dehydration or 2) bloat - which is digestive gas that can't escape. I've read lots of discussions relating to cows suggesting that farmers feed hay in the morning and let cows out to graze in the afternoon, thus mixing the dry and wet and ameliorating the problem. I have not, personally, had this problem with my goat herd. Yes, I have had goats with diarrhea. Yes, I have treated goats for endotoximia (I have lost some and saved more.) Just not in relation to spring grass growth. My go-to treatment for any digestive issues has become pro-biotics, available in paste or powder form from farm supply stores and catalogues. I use it on any baby goats with runny feces, and in circumstances where I have had to change feed quickly. (Or the time they broke into the grain bin and ate WAY more than was their daily allowance. In that case I mixed a slurry of pro-bios and water and gave everyone a huge syringe full orally. All digestive problems were averted.)

Yes, absolutely, a goat's natural food source is BROWSE (plants growing up off the ground like bushes, vines, leaves, bark), not grass. And we as goat keepers need to do all we can to provide as much as possible. But you can't buy bales of browse, and bushes don't recover from grazing as fast as grass does. Goat keepers need to mitigate those circumstances by providing as much food variety as possible and adding a good mineral mix.

I have found, that my own goats (Nigerians and Oberhaslis) eat more tree bark when they have no other good source of minerals. I'm not saying that you can eliminate the bark eating by suppling a good mineral mix, but you can minimize the damage. By "good mineral mix" I mean one that 1) does not say "sheep" anywhere on the label, even if it says "sheep and goats." Minerals labeled for sheep don't have enough copper for goats. (Goats, especially dark colored goats NEED copper, while it can be toxic to sheep.) 2) A loose (sandy) mineral mix rather than a block. The exception that has worked for me is BlueSeal's molasses based mineral tubs (but the Equine Choice, not the Sheep/Goat/Deer.) 3) One where salt is not the first (and therefore most abundant) ingredient. These bags are usually cheapest. The best I have found is Golden Blend out of Georgia, but the shipping (to me) is amazingly expensive, and no one nearby carries it, so my second choice is the goat mix at Countryside Natural Products.

You mentioned that goats were eating peaches off these trees. Please be aware that stone fruit (peaches, apricots, cherries) tree leaves can be toxic. Choke or wild cherries are the worst. The leaves aren't a problem when they are green and growing on the tree, nor when they are dry and crackly on the ground, but when they are wilted they can be deadly.

My goats have daily access to young woods because I "walk" them for about 2 hrs each day. This consists of me opening the barnyard gate and calling "Come on goats." Then I walk toward whatever area I want them to start grazing, and they follow. Once they get tired of that area though, my job turns into keeping them away from dangerous areas (the road.) To get them back in I wait for rain, or dark, or give them hay or grain as positive reenforcement. The first two times I tried this (in desperation during a drouth, when neither grass nor hay was available) I went really heavy on the bribery (higher than usual grain feeding) to get them to go home, but now (more than three years later) all I have to do is go to the gate and call again.

I'm not sure it is possible to grow all the feed a goat needs in a small area since what they prefer is browse and that grows so much more slowly than pasture. Certainly rotational grazing would give you the best chance, but you'll have to manage your plants very carefully indeed. The list in the post above is certainly quite comprehensive, and I don't see any thing on it that would hurt goats, but, in my experience, finding seed for most of the list won't be easy. Also, I bought sorghum hay once and they absolutely refused to eat any. On the other hand, they go crazy for oat hay and will graze any grain plant as well as soybeans.

I have found older editions of "Goat Husbandry" much more useful than newer editions.