[d_rc]

Another story from a fellow hacker with a backyard goat - It actually starts in a very subtle way. Goats have different tastes and moods, and it's not like they eat everything right away unless the density of a goat per backyard m2 is too high. I started giving mine some free "roaming" time with the chickens every day before the sunset. It looked very innocent - first few days she ate just some weeds, nettle and some low hanging branches of pear trees. No worries, I was planning to cut those anyways. After few weeks of not paying that much attention in the evenings, bottom third of all our ~12 trees were gone, she got into salads, potatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, peppers and cucumbers, all nettle was done, and she started checking out tomatoes (which seemed that she is really really not into at first). I am building a new goat house with it's own separate "backyard" with weeds that she won't be able to escape. :)

[h2odragon]

> won't be able to escape

I suspect you may be falling to overconfidence there.

Also, single goat? That's tough, I've done it by running the goat with a pack of dogs and treating it as a dog, but witha lone goat, who doesn't feel they have herd, keeping them happy is difficult.

[d_rc]

You're right. I am aware of this, and we're planning to get one more goat and also a dog. Right now, the goat seems to be pretty happy roaming around the backyard with all the chickens. It even waits with them while they lay eggs, etc. Pretty cool. But sure, you're right :)

[Jedd]

Do you mean the goat is eating the tomato fruit, or the tomato leaves?

The latter are toxic to (AIUI) all monogastrics, same as potatoes and other Solanum family plants - you may want to reign that behaviour in, assuming the animals are still alive.

[d_rc]

I am aware of this and I was monitoring the behavior when she started approaching that part of the backyard. The goat is somewhat pretty smart because it does not touch the leaves at all. Just the fruits.

[soperj]

Goats are ruminants.

[leaflets2]

> Ruminants [...] are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion [...] The word "ruminant" comes from the Latin ruminare, which means "to chew over again".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant

TIL: So that's from where the word "ruminate" comes :-)

[toast0]

FYI, we were letting our goats and chickens roam at the same time, but hanging out with the goats and it was fine... until the goats figured out how to squeeze into the chicken run and gobble up the chicken feed.

Apparently they find it super tasty, but it's not vegetarian, so they shouldn't eat it. The chickens get into much less trouble and can roam mostly unsupervised; but we've got a lot of aerial preditors to watch out for.

[stefs]

at least she didn't eat the chicks.

[ridgered4]

When I was a child we had pigs and chickens next to each other. The chickens started sleeping atop the resting pig since it was warm. It was cute until the pig started devouring the chickens!