Goats and trees, plants

Q. Sorry to bug you but I was wondering if you could tell me whether pygmy goats will eat citrus trees, landscape plants etc.? I would like to get some for my daughters and have an acre and am wondering if they can just roam around under the trees. Thanks.

Chris

A. Don't worry about "bugging" - I'm happy to help. Hopefully I can provide you with some answers.

Goats like eating "everything", unfortunately. They prefer some plants over others, but if penned in an area that has plants, they will probably eat most of the plants out of boredom. If you have ornamental plants, some of them are poisonous to goats, so check up on them first.

When I let my goats roam around the yard under supervision, they ignore a lot of the plants, but it's because they want to play and prefer to snack on their favorite plants rather than any ol' plant. But if I had any kind of plant inside their enclosure, they would probably eat them down to nothing.

My goats ignore our citrus trees, but I don't have the goats penned under the citrus. Goats do like the fruit of citrus.

Oh, and just so you know, fruit with a stone/pit such as peaches, plums or cherries have leaves that are poisonous.

I have my goats penned under a banana tree, two pomegranates, a fig, and a guava. They like eating the banana leaves and the leaves of the guava and pomegranates. But they don't like the fig because of the sap. For awhile, they were eating the bark of the pomegranates and the guava and were almost killing the trees. But when I purchased this:
http://www.petvetsupply.com/mscmfar004.html and painted the bark, they stopped chewing the bark.

If you don't have a whole lot of citrus, then you can paint the bark of each tree for precaution.

TweetPrinter-friendly