What Goats Actually Eat — and the Garden Plants That Could Kill Them

Congratulations — two is the right number. Goats are herd animals and a lone goat is a miserable goat, so you've already got the hardest bit right.

The feeding bit is simpler than the internet suggests, but it is unforgiving. Most goat emergencies seen by farm vets aren't exotic diseases. They're a diet that drifted, a feed bin that got raided, or a hedge trimming thrown over the fence with the best intentions.

A goat is a browser, not a lawnmower

Sheep and cattle graze, heads down, working through grass. Goats browse: they prefer to reach up for leaves, twigs, bark, brambles and hedge, picking the tops off things and moving on. Given a choice between a lush paddock and a scruffy bramble patch, most goats choose the brambles.

That matters for two reasons. First, a bare grass paddock isn't the rich environment it looks like — goats do better with hedge, branches, a browse pile or safe tree cuttings to work through. Second, goats pick up worm larvae when forced to graze short grass, which is one more reason to give them height, variety and somewhere to stand off the ground.

Underneath it all is a rumen: a large fermentation vat full of microbes that do the actual digesting. You are feeding those microbes. They adapt slowly, they hate sudden change, and they are the reason goats fall ill from a single greedy afternoon.

The daily ration for two pet goats

For non-breeding, non-milking pet goats, the daily list is short.

• Forage, always available. Good clean hay — soft, green-ish, sweet-smelling — in a rack off the ground, plus browse and pasture when you have it. Goats are wasteful feeders and will refuse hay they've trodden on or soiled.
• Clean water, changed daily. Goats are fussy and will drink less from a slimy or leaf-filled trough, which raises the risk of urinary problems in males.
• A mineral supplement made for goats, free-choice as a lick or loose mineral.
• Optional: a small amount of hard feed, only if body condition, age or workload calls for it.

Don't judge condition by eye through a winter coat. Run your hands along the backbone and over the ribs every couple of weeks — ribs should be feelable under a thin covering, not sharp and not buried. That hands-on habit will tell you more than any feeding chart.

Goat minerals, not sheep minerals

This one catches a lot of new keepers, because the feed shop shelf often has a generic "sheep and goat" bag.

Sheep are unusually sensitive to copper, so sheep feeds and licks are deliberately low in it. Goats need considerably more copper than sheep do, and a goat kept long-term on sheep minerals can become deficient — a dull, staring coat, faded colour, poor growth and more parasite trouble. Buy minerals labelled for goats, and don't stack multiple copper sources or dose copper on a hunch; speak to your vet first, because too much is also a real risk.

Hard feed: useful, and the most common cause of trouble

Concentrate feed — goat mix, pellets, cereals — earns its place for growing kids, pregnant does, milkers and old goats losing condition. For two healthy pet wethers on decent forage, it's often not needed at all beyond a token handful for training and handling.

If you do feed it: little, often, weighed rather than scooped, and introduced over a week or two. A sudden load of starch crashes the rumen's pH, kills off the good microbes and causes acidosis — a goat that's suddenly dull, off feed, grinding its teeth, scouring and sometimes staggering. It can kill.

Which brings us to the single most important bit of goat-keeping furniture: a feed store a goat cannot open. Goats climb, headbutt, lift latches and are astonishingly persistent.

Assume your goat will one day get into the feed bin — then build the bin so she can't.

Male goats, especially castrated ones, are also prone to urinary stones when fed too much grain and not enough forage. A wether straining, crying, dribbling urine or twitching his tail with nothing coming out is an emergency, not a wait-and-see.

Treats, scraps and the garden-clipping trap

Small amounts of fruit and veg are fine as treats — a slice of apple, a carrot, a handful of banana skin, some kale. Keep them to a token amount and avoid anything mouldy.

What to keep away:

• Lawn clippings. They ferment fast in a heap and faster in a rumen, and goats bolt them without chewing. Bloat risk.
• Mouldy hay, silage or bread. Mould is linked to listeriosis, which causes circling, a drooping ear or face and is frequently fatal.
• Bread, biscuits, cake and crisps in any quantity — pure starch, same problem as a raided feed bin.
• Dog or cat food, and anything containing animal protein. Not goat food, and dog food's copper levels aren't formulated for them.
• Green or sprouting potatoes, potato and tomato foliage, rhubarb leaves, onions in quantity, avocado.

Plants that poison goats

Goats have a reputation for eating anything, which gives people false confidence. They taste-test widely, but they are not immune — and a bored goat on bare ground has worse judgement than a well-fed one.

The ones that most often cause serious harm in UK gardens and hedgerows:

• Rhododendron and azalea — classic goat poisoning. Drooling, vomiting, severe colic, collapse. Very small amounts matter.
• Yew — can kill within hours, including dried clippings.
• Cherry laurel and wilted cherry or plum leaves — cyanide.
• Ragwort — cumulative liver damage, and more palatable once cut and wilted.
• Laburnum, foxglove, lily of the valley, box, privet, bracken, and large quantities of acorns.

Walk the fence line before the goats arrive, and again each spring. Check what overhangs from next door, and ask neighbours never to post clippings over the hedge, however kindly meant. A short, friendly note saves a lot of grief.

Changing anything, safely

New hay, new pellets, first turnout onto spring grass, a move to a lusher field: make the change over ten to fourteen days, mixing old and new. Fill them with hay before they go out onto rich, wet or clover-heavy pasture, and limit the first few sessions to an hour or two.

Then mostly leave them to it. Hay, water, minerals, something to climb, something to strip the bark off, and a companion who speaks goat. That's the recipe.