People have asked me to share a listing of edible & poisonous plants for goats, but I hesitated to make a list of plants you can, or shouldn't feed, to goats because there is no possible way I, as one person, could know all plants the are poisonous to goats. I may know most in my own area (East TN, USA), but there may be plants in places such as CA, England and Australia that I do not know, may would mistakenly not add to the list. I do not want the responsibly of a goat getting poisoned because I did not list the plant the goat was fed.

I have seen many "Poisonous Plant Lists" on the Internet that listed plants that I know for a absolute fact are NOT poisonous to goats because my own goats eat them (such as English Ivy, which they love). Someone said they had a list that said St. John's Wort was poisonous to goat, which is isn't. You just cannot believe, as gospel, everything you read, especially on the Internet. Please always research and make sure to check and verify your facts.

Although the goat's digestive system is similar to that of other ruminants, such as cattle and sheep, who are "grazers" and eat grass, goats are more related to deer, who are "browsers". As browsers, goats are designed to eat, and prefer, brush and trees more than grass. It is natural for them to nibble a little here, and a little there. Because of this, even if you have poisonous plants on your property, very often, if they have plenty of "safe" browse, they rarely eat enough bad stuff to cause any real harm. For example, we have Nightshade growing on our property, but our goats have plenty of other things to browse upon, so they never touch the Nightshade.

Never make big changes in the way you feed a goat all at once, or feed large quantities of a new food that the goat has never had before, if you do this, you can throw off the bacteria in the goat's rumen, which can cause the goat to bloat, or the rumen to shut down. When changing a goat's diet, do so slowly, to give the bacteria in the rumen time to adjust.

Too much of anything is not a good thing.