If you have a favorite lilac or rose bush, apple tree, or even a large fir tree, be ready to have it relieved of leaves, bark, and ultimately its life. If you want to keep any flowers or bushes and trees, make sure they aren’t growing in an area where your goats might go. You can fence them off, or in the case of trees, you can goat-proof them. The upcoming sections give you ideas for protecting your plants and trees.
Considering which trees to protect
You need to remove any trees that are poisonous to goats and fence off or goat-proof any others you don’t want destroyed. (See the section “Removing poisonous plants” to find out which common trees can be poisonous.)
If your property is large enough, you can fence off an area for your goats that doesn’t have trees, or you can decide to sacrifice some trees to the goats. After all, the bark and leaves are good for them. You can even locate the pen where the leaves can still fall or branches hang over the fence so your goats can enjoy the trees without destroying them. If the area you need to fence includes trees that you want to protect, try goat-proofing the trees. The next section tells you how.
Making trees goat-proof
Goats will damage and eventually kill trees by browsing on the leaves and shoots, stripping the bark, and rubbing their horns (if they have them) on the trees. The only trees I have that seem to be immune to goat damage are old-growth Douglas firs whose bark is probably not tender enough for them. Your goats cause worse damage when they don’t have access to any other plants to eat, but they enjoy tender bark and leaves even when grass and shrubs are available.
If you want to save trees that are within the goats’ fenced area or just outside the fence, you need to goat-proof them. A better choice, if you can manage it, is to avoid including trees in the goats’ area; goat-proofing individual trees is time-consuming and expensive.
You can goat-proof a larger tree simply by wrapping it up to the level that your largest goat can reach when standing with its front legs on the tree. You can determine this height by holding a treat up next to the tree and measuring how high the goat can reach. (If your goats aren’t full-grown, you have to estimate.)
Materials you can use to wrap a tree include
Plastic strips designed to cover rain gutters to keep leaves out: I found these at a garage sale. I wrapped them around the tree and hooked them together with wire.
Hardware cloth, also called rabbit wire: It is more rigid than gutter covers and can be attached to the tree or to posts in the ground surrounding the tree. However, it’s expensive and doesn’t fit as neatly as gutter covers. If you attach hardware cloth directly to the tree, it also will inhibit outward growth.
Window screen netting: You can obtain a 1,000-foot roll for less than $100 and use it to wrap quite a few trees, depending on their diameter.
If you have only a few trees at risk of being debarked and want something more permanent, you can goat-proof trees with triangular wooden enclosures like those in Figure 4-1. A wooden enclosure requires three posts as tall as the tallest goat can reach, and wooden slats attached with screws across them. You can attach them close enough together to prevent the goats from getting their heads through the slats, or you can make the enclosure far enough outside the tree that they can’t reach even if they get their heads through.
FIGURE 4-1: A tree goat-proofed with a wooden enclosure.
Protecting Your Herd
After you finally get the goats you dreamed of, you don’t want to put them at risk or lose them from an avoidable cause. In this section, I tell you about some of the steps you can take to protect your herd from potential hazards.
Putting hazards out of reach
When you’re checking out your property, yard, garage, or barn in preparation for your goats, reconsider items that you have stored or are in use there with an eye to goat safety. If you’re going to drink your goats’ milk or eat them, you are also at risk of ingesting any poison that your goats get into. Remove any items that might put a goat at risk, especially
Lead paint: Goats love to chew and will invariably chew on walls, especially if you don’t want them to. Lead paint is common in old barns and other structures. To be safe, assume that the paint on old walls and doors is lead-based, and don’t use those areas for goats. Bare, untreated wood is actually best.
Railroad ties: If you are putting up a new structure and have access to free railroad ties, don’t use them. They contain creosote, which is poisonous to goats.
Plastic: Keep all plastic, particularly plastic bags and plastic twine, out of reach of goats. Goats that swallow plastic can suffer from a blocked rumen and lose weight or die. (See “Hardware disease” in Chapter 11.) Swallowing plastic also causes symptoms such as loss of appetite, decreased milk production, and bloating. Be careful to properly dispose of plastic from mineral blocks or other types of feed.
Solvents and other chemicals: Make sure that you have removed any old kerosene, solvents, or other chemicals that people often keep in garages or barns. These hazards can sicken or kill goats. Even those stored on high shelves within a goat area aren’t safe.
Pressed wood/fiberboard: This is another material that some goats will chew on, if given the chance. They’ll eat holes in a building made of this material.
Avoiding tethering