Help! Goats are eating chicken feed!

[augiedranch]

i have many many goats, and raise them. they share a couple acres with the chickens and i had alot of trouble keeping my persistant goats out of chicken food too.

ill post a pic for you of what i did

and putting up the food for a while will not work. i swear! i tried it.
bb gun worked for a little bit though lol

my nigerian dwarf was the worst, but the lamaches and boars were bad too.

make the hole a little bit smaller/shorter. its ok ur hens will fit, mine manage.
then, on the inside of the hole place a "obsticle course" your hens will easily be able to jump over the boards of wood, but the goat would not be able to bend her back in such a way to go all the way into the coup.

does it make any sense?


hope it helps. let me know if u need a pic

 

[augiedranch]

oh i forgot,

i work at a vet clinic and if you have any wether goats (castrated ones) too much chicken food can over time give them urinary calculi, which results in them not being able to urinate and results in death. (or an expensive painful procedure that may or may not work)

 

[Alexis]

My goat ended up with bloat from my son mistakenly feeding the goat a bunch of chicken food with lots of cracked corn. Took a few days and some probiotics to get him over that, but I certainly keep the chicken food a LONG way from where the goats are now. It's all stuff we learn by trial and error around here

That wasn't quite as bad as finding out a metal shed won't work for goat shelter in a windstorm!

 

[helmstead]

Chicken feed is toxic to goats because of the phosphorus to calcium ratio. In ALL sexes, it will lead to UC rather quickly. Bucks and wethers are most often affected because of their narrower and winding urinary tracts.

ZykloniaDark-GothikRanchr, I highly recommend you stop letting your goats get into the chicken feed. You will eventually have a problem.

FlightsofFancy knows all about it (those are my babies she has there, haha, and I try to warn everyone that buys my goats about as many potential problems as possible).

 

[Chatychick]

Scratch grain isnt bad but the layer pellets or mash is very bad for them. My roos that stay with the goats eat goat feed and the chickens or hens get the layer and yep if you do some research you will see it can alos give the version of mad cow disease in goats. NOT GOOD and goats will eat anything...they dont care till you loose 1 and see how painful it is trying to save them from it , you will figure out what and how to stop them from it. Also too much corn isnt good either.

 

[gila_dog]

Quote:
Best advice so far. I like the cattle panels that have 4" squares, top to bottom. These are harder to find, but keep goats out, and chickens in. They are very strong, so the goats can stand up on them with their front hooves and not do any damage. The cattle panels that are easier to find have big squares at the top and smaller ones at the bottom. If your goats have horns they will constantly sticking their heads thru these panels, especially if there is food on the other side, and getting them caught. Goats will try to eat anything (yes, I've even seen them nibbling on a beer can).

They are voracious eaters. There is no way to train them to not try to eat stuff.

 

[Silkies4life]

I had the same problem. Like noted before, the scratch is not that bad but the other is. I also used stock panels and closed off the front of one of my smaller loafing sheds for the horses. I have my nesting boxes in there with a feeder and water for the chickens. I also attached wire to the stock panels so that no preditors could get in there. I cut a "flap" and can lower it at night so that nothing can get in or out. It works great although the goats don't care for the idea. I also had to do that because I have Nigeon Dwarf goats so they are small enough to fit through the squares in the stock panel. My husband and I joke that the chicken feed must be like crack to the goats because no matter what they can't resist.