List of things to NOT let your goats eat! Poisonous Plants!

Goats eat anything! Right? If you own goats you know that this is not true. Goats are picky eaters and browse rather then graze like other livestock. Some people may think that goats will eat plastic, tin cans, and other things that are not food. Yeah, sometimes they do like to chew on things like that but they should not be eating those kinds of things regularly.

Goats are a ruminant animal. Meaning they re-chew their food or chew their cud similar to a cow. A goat's stomach is susceptible to sudden changes in diet. By this, I mean if you suddenly change their diet they will have problems adjusting. This is not poisoning your goat but you must be careful to slowly adjust their diet. Problems like scours/diarrhea can happen when suddenly adjusting their diet. When a goat has diarrhea they can get dehydrated more quickly and that is not good.

In the spring when we first put the our goats out to pasture some of them have diarrhea for a few days as they adjust. We do our best to slowly introduce grass back into their diet from their winter hay by putting them in a pasture that is not super luscious in early spring and continue feeing hay for a week or two and then move them to a better pasture. Normal pasture grass is not bad for goats it is just large amounts of it when they are not use to it will cause them to have diarrhea.

In our first year of having goats we lost 3 of them to poisonous plants. They ate yew (not sure the spices but all are poisonous to goats) and they died. Actually 6 of them ate the yew and we were able to save 3 of them. Maybe they did not eat as much of the others or maybe the baking soda and oil we gave them to help them with their bloat worked.

If you move your goats to a new pasture be sure to check for poisonous plants to avoid the terribleness of dealing with bloat and possible death of your goats.

Most times goats will not eat poisonous plants or enough of the plant to become sick. But if your goats do not have much pasture or lacking enough food they will resort to eating the poisonous plants. Be sure your goats have sufficient good food and they will avoid the poisonous plants in the pasture. But do your part too. Get rid of poisonous plants from

your goat's pasture.

Rhododendron Bush

Here is a list of 20 plants that are poisonous to goats:

(This is not a conclusive list. Be sure to do your own research and add any other poisonous foods in the comments that you have had experience with to help other goat owners.)

1. Rhododendrons. We have one in front of our house and when we move goats from the one pasture to the other some of the goats have gotten a bite or more from that bush. So far we have not had problems but I am trying to convince my Dad to get rid of that bush!

2. Mountain Laurels.

3. Azalea

4. Yew (all species) we had 3 goats die because they ate this. (So sad)

5. Hemlock

6. Red Maple Trees

7. Burning Bush.

8. Ficus

9. Wilted Cherry, plum, peach, nectarines, apricots, and almonds. We had a cherry tree fall over in the pasture where the goats were and they ate it before the leaves wilted and they were fine. We got rid of what they did not eat when we found it the next day.

10. Holly

11. Elderberry

12. Night shade Plants like potatoes, tomatoes, and pepper. We have put our goats in the garden in the fall after our garden was done but there were still some tomato and pepper plants. They had plenty of good grass to eat but they did eat the tomato and pepper plants but we did not have problems.

13. Onions

14. Rhubarb leaves

15. Irises

16. Lantana

17. Foxglove

18. Morning Glorys

19. Milkweed

20. Gourds