Plant my goats won't eat - what is it?

[Unitsi]

This is taking over their enclosure and they do not eat it.
What is this and is it dangerous for them, if they do eat it?

 

[cassie]

I have no idea what it is. If I were you I would take a sample to your local ag extension/farm advisor's office. Goats generally won't eat things that are not good for them unless they have nothing else to eat. And sometimes they won't eat it because they aren't familiar with it. For instance, I was at a friend's place and we were walking through her field. She pointed at a weed and remarked that her goats wouldn't touch the stuff. I told her they would if she borrowed one of my goats. I had the same weed growing on my place and my goats devoured it.

 

[Cowgirl71]

Could you take a picture of it growing out in your field?

It looks a lot like perilla mint to me. Perilla mint is very invasive, has a shallow root system, i.e. easy to yank out, grows green with a varying purple tinge (some plants are all green, others get quite purple), gets a spike of light purple flowers in late summer or fall, grows especially thickly in shady areas with good soil, and the plant's juices have a strong minty-ish aroma. If that is what you have, then yes, it is poisonous. If eaten in small amounts it gives them bad diarrhea, in higher amounts it's fatal. I would suggest making sure the goats don't run out of stuff to eat. If they get hungry enough they will eat the perilla mint. During the summer drought of 2012 a local breeder lost 23 goats to perilla mint poisoning.

We raise beef cattle, and also run a herd of Kiko/Boer cross meat goats to help keep the weeds and brush down. The main two weeds that the goats nor the cattle eat are bitter sneezeweed and parilla mint, both are poisonous. Rotational grazing has greatly reduced the bitter sneezeweed for us, but the perilla mint is being quite invasive, especially in shady areas. The research I've done is that some herbicides work on it, but the only organic/non-poisonous way to get rid of it is to pull it by hand (which is very effective, but can be quite time consuming/not practical, depending on how much acreage a person has), or make sure to brush hog or weed-whack it down before the flowers go to seed. This often requires several mowings a year, as they'll quickly resprout from the stems and immediately try to put flowers out again before frost. It is an annual, so if you stay on top of it it is theoretically controllable.