Crops planted for goats

[MillsFarmFamily]

What would be the best things to plant in a garden for my goats. My spring garden will share a fence line with our goats, so I would like to plant somethign there that they can have, any suggestions?

[GeorgiaberryM]

Our goats enjoyed bean or pea vines and corn stalks and leaves.

[Croenan]

I would check about the bean plants. I wanna say that I read somewhere about them being toxic. I know that most brassica (cabbabge) plants can be toxic as well. My goats love my sugar snap peas and since they are cold weather crops and grow very quickly, they were a good choice for me.

[chamoisee]

Regular bean plants are OK. Sweet Peas are not, and I think there is some exotic type of bean that's also unsafe.

Brassicas are OK as long as you don't overdo it. I used to feed quite a bit of kale to my does. The thing is that you don't want to feed it all at once, just a few plants to start with, and build up to larger amounts.

Fenceline? Comfrey, but don't till it, or it will spread. If you just plant it and don't disturb the roots afterwards, it will pretty much stay put...unless you have gophers, and then a stray plant may pop up elsewhere (they carry off pieces of root and bury it), but this isn't a big problem- just don't ever till it!

Others: squash, pumpkins, turnips, greens (I used to buy up lots of the 10/$1.00 seeds and plant stuff for the goats with that)...you can just plants lots extra of what you like and then feed the excess or leaves (beet leaves, for example) to them. Then if a crop doesn't do so well, you'll still have enough for yourself.

I've also heard of people growing mangels and feedings those to goats. Personally, one of my favorite goat crops was Atlantic Giant Pumpkins...just one would feed them happily for days...along with their hay, of course!

[pookshollow]

Don't forget sunflowers!!! I planted some along my fenceline last year, and they gave hours of amusement to the goats. The trick is to plant far enough away that they can't reach all the leaves. When the heads were ripe, I would throw one in at a time - the chickens enjoyed those too - then I would pull up the plant and throw it in for the goats.