Anyone have goats and chickens and turkeys all together? feed issues

[Peaches]

I do now - two goats who are still growing, so I am HOPING they outgrow the door to my chicken coop (12 x 13) where they would love to gorge on chicken feed. Sigh.. at the moment,I leave them in their "stall" in the morning (and chickens have food in evening and all night and morning till I let them out, but the poor turkeys roost outside, so need the morning feed. Then I put all the food away and let them out. (coop and all animals are in one pasture together).

If you do, how do you handle the feed issues?

 

[Blondie]

I have goats, turkeys and chickens.

We had to enclosed the little chicken door so the goats don't get in, but let it be big enough for the poultry. Otherwise, like you said, the goats will eat the chicken feed. Why is that? What so tasty about it that the goats will eat it?

When I got the turkeys about the first of June, I sequestered them for a few weeks. Now they are with the chickens and everyone gets along fine! The turkeys are bigger than my chickens and they act like overgrown kids!!

They eat the same feed as the chickens, along with other treats I give them and they also raid the garden.

I don't know what I'll do when the turkeys get too big to get in the little chicken door......

Here are the turkeys at the feeder:

Here's a pic of the turkeys standing on the goat/chicken house (I guess it used to be a dog house):

This is an old picture, but hopefully you can see the little chicken door on the bottom of the people door of the chicken coop. How do those goats fit in there?????

 

[sbicheidi]

hello, newbie here. i just registered and thought i'd answer your chicken/goat cohabitation question.

i indeed have both species coexisting nicely. i have 6 goats and 5 hens. all was well until we bought a pair of nigerian dwarf kids - they were about the size of hen when we got them. they could easily squeeze through the little door in the coop that the hens used. eventually, what i did was dig a small hole under the frame of the coop that only the chickens could navigate. spent a couple hours working with the chickens to train them on the new entry and it worked great.

the real reason i wanted to post here is to urge you strongly NOT to let your goats eat the chicken food, particularly if it's a laying formula. too much calcium in a goat's diet, a male goat in particular, is bad. they are very prone to bladder/kidney stones and that will almost always kill them. so do your best to keep them away from the chicken feed.

there is a great site, comparable to this one called goatweb.com you'll see much discussion about stones and what to do. in short, the best thing to do is avoid food that is known to cause stones.

thanks! now on to my question in another thread....

 

[Peaches]

Thanks for the response... yeah, I know the chicken food won't be good for them, which is why I continue to puzzle this out. These are 3 month old Boer/Saanen and boer/Oberhalsi crosses so I hope they will out grow the opening - but, my turkey is BIG and that is the reason I can't make the opening smaller. hmmmm... they sure do love the feed - although I get the impression they love anything edible!


thanks for the goat web tip

 

[cgjsmith]

my pygmies love scratch. if they can find a way into the coops they will/ i'm always stoping them from gorging themselves. they bloat up really bad. Though my turkeys are still small enough to be in a coop, my geese are big as well. we put in a double gated area to hold the goats while they eat and feed the geese at the same time. that way they are seperated. Though we have more problems with the geese running the goats off so they can have the sweet feed ha ha. C

 

[Chatychick]

I also have goats, chickens, turkeys, and geese and 1 duck co-existing together and they do fine...my fowl will eat the goat feed thats left over and havent had a problems with any of them...the hens however free range and in their coop is where I put the layer mash and the goats cant get in there. I also go to goatweb, GoatTalk and Dairygoatinfo the are sites that can help you with this too. They are very informative with goats and help alot with anything goat related and on goat talk we talk about every kind of critter...Good Luck

 

[aran]

i have had to make MAJOR adjustments to the size of the chicken door to make it so small that the chickens have a tight fit to get in and out of it because the goats were getting in the coop and not only eating all the food but also destroying the inside of the coop!

 

[zatsdeb]

I have 7 ducks, and about 40 chickens..with 3 roosters and I have 4 goats. 2 white saanan and 2 boer..plus 1 boer billy separate from them. I run them all together. they co-exist just fine. I read that if you run chickens with livestock it helps with parasite control. I have 2 miniature donkeys too...(separate from the goats though) the chickens and ducks can move from pasture to pasture through the holes in the fences we have cut for them.

 

[Peaches]

Well time has passed and I LOVE the two goats - they are so sweet (pests of course) and the donkeys like them. The goats actually CLIMB on the donkeys (pics below) and they don't mind. The STILL get in the coop and so food has to go up when they are out and down for the chickens when the goats are in their pen. I hope they grow out of it. The picture of them running out of the chicken coop, all but screams "Who me? I wasn't eating chicken food!"

Anyway, all seems to have settled down and the Great Pyrs like them too.

 

[zatsdeb]

I wish I could let my goats and donkeys run together, my little Jack is a pain though, he gets too rough, and I am afraid he would hurt them just playing with them.
The way he plays with my Jenny you would think they are big dogs, jumping on each other and knocking each other down. My goats play with each other anyways, and sometimes like to chase the chickens.