Is There Anything I Can Grow To Feed My Goats?

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Anonymous Profile
Anonymous answered
Goats like to browse shrubs and trees, and browse should be a part of a balanced healthy goat diet.   

Shrubs you can grow include: Weeping willow, elms, blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), Coprosma retusa (looking glass plant) and tree lucerne or Tagasaste. You can also grow leafy vegetables to feed to your goats.   

Note that there are some garden plants that are poisonous to goats. Some examples of these are: Azalea, Daphne, fuchsia, foxglove, laurel, rhubarb leaves, green parts of the potato or tomato. If in doubt, get a good book!   

Tagasaste has my wholehearted recommendation as a drought-tolerant shrub that can be cut back severely and then will happily regenerate in the absence of rain. Ruminants find it very palatable. We cut and carry it, but you can plant it in fenced hedgerows for direct browsing, provided the animals are kept off it for about the first 2 years.

Ronnie Maye Profile
Ronnie Maye answered
Goats like to eat anything green. You can grow some kind of fast growing grass, they also like honey suckle. The ones I always had just ate anything that they came upon the was growing wild. In the winter I fed them hay all during that season.
thanked the writer.
Mary Guimaraes
Mary Guimaraes commented
Keep in mind that what the goat eats will flavor the milk. Wild onions and garlic will make for really nasty milk. Goats love green things but don't much like to eat grass on the ground. They prefer vines or other plants they have to reach for. English ivy grows really fast, there are other ivy plants too. These can be planted to climb the barn and the goats will munch on them..

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