When you start goat farming, there are several different ways you can manage your goats. There are intensive methods, which require a lot of management from you as the farmer. The plus side of intensive methods is that while they are more effort on your part, each goat requires less space. You are generally the one who is bringing the food into the goats, providing lots of care, managing their exercise, and so on. This is the most common way of raising goats, especially for dairy. This was the method I started out with my goats. As I learned more about goats I realized I preferred a more extensive method of goat farming.
With an extensive method, your job is to mimic the goats natural environment as much as possible. The goats are rotated through pasture, and instead of intensive management of health issues or kidding problems, your job as the goat farmer is to select the best stock who can kid efficiently and are disease and parasite resistant. If I raise goats again, this is the method I will use. This is also the method discussed in Holistic Goat Care by Gianaclis Caldwell. I received a free review copy, and highly recommend it if you want more detail on goat farming with extensive management.
Extensive management requires more space than most people have access to, (especially in the city!), but you can utilize the space you do have better by planting trees and shrubs that goats prefer to eat and increase the amount of food you can grow for your herd.
Here’s a list of some of the best plants for goat farming to maximize efficiency:
Pasture Mix Plants:
- Grasses
- Clover
- Vetch
- Chicory
- Plantain
- Curly Dock
- Pigweed
- Horseweed
- Lambs Quarter
Bushes:
- Star Thistle
- Blackberry
- Juniper
- Poison Oak
- Kudzu
- Rosemary
- Peppermint
- Grapevines
- Bamboo
- Comfrey
- Catnip
- Ivy
- Knotweed
- Raspberry
- Roses
Garden Produce:
- Mangel Beets
- Turnips
- Kale
- Carrots
- Radishes
- Winter Squash
- Bolted Lettuce
- Insect damaged greens
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Cantalope
- Celery
- Fava beans
- Sunflowers
Trees:
- Willows
- Black Locust
- Sweet Gum
- Bay Tree
- Cedar
- Cottonwood
- Fir
- Dogwood
- Elm
- Ash
- Mulberry
- Oak leaves
- Pine
For a more comprehensive list of plants that are edible and poisonous to goats, I recommend Fiasco Farms. The list in this post tend to be easily grown, fast growing, or weedy plants that are prolific and that you can include in a smaller space to provide more food. I planted bamboo and willow along the edge of our goat yard, and even on our tiny homestead they produced a good amount of supplemental food for our girls.
If you are thinking about goat farming, I recommend planting now so your goats have plenty of forage, and if you already have goats, hopefully you can add a bit more variety to their diet and save on some hay costs for you. And if you are thinking about extensive goat farming, check out Holistic Goat Care!
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My goats don’t like catnip. And poison oak and ivy they only eat once. It makes them sick and throw up.
Bummer! Others have had good luck with their goats clearing those out for them.
I can’t imagine ANYONE INTENTIONALLY planting poison oak/ivy for ANY reason!
I’m sorry if it seems that was my recommendation. Many people use goats to eradicate poison oak and ivy, so if you have it already present on your land, it would make sense to include it as part of your goats rotational grazing pattern.
@Carolyn, I plant it in a contained area so I can show people what it looks like. It also has berries that the birds love and is really pretty in the fall.
I didn’t know they had berries. That’s really interesting.
I know my goats eradicated my poison ivy problem, along with the pine trees and sweet gum wanting to grow up in the pasture . Don’t plant it, but if you have a woody, poison oak or ivy invested area, goats are great for it! And you don’t have to supplement with feed, which is a plus for me. Good post!
Nice!
Kale is high in oxalic acid, in thoery not recommended for goats on the internet,but like most things probably ok now and then, but I wouldnt recommend releasing them onto a field of the stuff
Thanks for sharing!
What kind of grasses are you recommending?
I have an area being cleared for utilities and will need replanted. It was wooded.
Any lawn mix that does well in your landscape is good, such as rye, blue grass, fescue, etc.
@Kathryn, lawn grass is not the same as pasture grasses. Lawn grass has almost no nutritional value, while the right mix of pasture grass may be all they need (plus minerals of course).
Yes, pasture grass is usually fescue or bluegrass in northern areas and bermuda in warmer areas with legumes included for protein, such as white clover. Residential lawns are commonly the same varieties of grasses but without the clover, but they can be managed as a pasture would be and include legumes.
i just want to know what i can plant that the goats will leave alone and if they did eat any, they wont get sick. any suggestions? thanks
Goats are pretty smart about avoiding things that will make them sick, especially if they have plenty of space. I like bamboo near goats because it grows quickly even if they eat it.
@Kathryn, Bamboo grows quickly only during growing season. I have 20 acres of it and got to learn that there is a lot of misinformation on it. Bamboo stalks grow out of the ground very quickly during growing season only and then just stop for most of the year. Barely enough bamboo leaves for one meal for a goat….and nothing else for the rest of the year. Oak trees are good for goats, because of the protein content AND the fact oaks are fast growing trees. Issue is, it involves labor to cut the branches. Still, not enough, unless the pasture is divided into multiple lots for grazing rotations
Interesting, I wonder if that varies on location. Here oak is incredibly slow growing.
I am raising meat goats on 35 acres of mostly wooded land. There is lots of brush as the land had been logged long before we purchased it. During spring and summer there is lots of browse for them to chow down on. However, come fall and winter there is very little available to them and I have to supplement with hay. Can you recommend a browse that I can plant that will last a little longer into the fall at least. My goal is to have to supplement them as little as possible. Right now I only have 7 goats, but I hope to have that at least doubled by kidding season.
Perhaps some fast growing bamboo? Or other evergreen plants such as juniper or pine.
Surprised you mentioned curly doc as a pasture plant for goats. It is poisonous to most livestock including goats.
True, if they did eat a lot of it at once. Colorado State University says “Livestock poisoning from eating curly leaf dock is relatively rare. Cattle would need to eat considerable quantities of the plant to be affectes (10-20 lbs of green plant for an adult cow.)” https://csuvth.colostate.edu/poisonous_plants/Plants/Details/83
Dear all;
I am writing from Lao P.D.R. I have 2 Hectares of land and I plant to start with 50 Does and 2 Bucks: Is this a good ratio (50 to 2)? 2. Main feed will be Mulberry leaves and 3. Would you recommend free range or 100 percent Captive? 4. What is maximum recommend number of goats can I raise with 2 Hectares of land.
Thanks.
Paul
I believe 2 hectares would be about 5 acres here in the U.S.
If you are raising dwarf goats they need about 1/10th of an acre each if they are free range. You would have plenty of room for 50 goats.
A buck can only handle about ten does a month. If you have Nigerian dwarfs and can breed year round, two should be enough.
In terms of free range, I would divide your land into several different areas and rotate the goats periodically. They can free range in each area and then move a fresh area to let the plants recover and any parasites die off.
“Insect damaged greens”
Don’t feed them this.
Oh interesting, why?
Bay Tree belongs to the Laurel family all of which are poisonous to goats.
Yes, the Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia, is poisonous to goats. The Bay Laurel, Laurus nobilis, is edible and used frequently in Mediterranean cooking.