Running sheep with goats?

[AtHomeDaughter]

Do sheep (ewes) and goats (does) get along as herd pals?

Just wondering.

[susanne]

they have different copper requirements. if you can adress that, they will go along just fine.

[cathleenc]

we only have 8 sheep and 2 goats and yes, they all get along fine.

Our goat herd queen will rear up on her hind legs and head butt send the sheep flying if she feels so inclined. She takes on the horned ram every chance she gets - he does everything he can not to even look at her.

We keep the goats in the barn by night, pasture with the sheep by day during winter. The goat herd queen, upon entering the pasture each day, establishes dominance immediately and then mellows for the rest of the day. Makes me laugh.

[susanne]

how do you prevent the ram breeding your does?

[cathleenc]

Originally Posted by susanne

how do you prevent the ram breeding your does?

the does should be all bred already - good. I'm planning on pulling the ram and any non-wethered ram-lambs about 2 months after birthing time.

[HazyDay]

Ours never did get along. we had hair sheep.

Our ram never did try breeding any does. He did try to breed our wether once when he followed me into their barn. Well we had a pair ram and ewe so well he did his job and went months with out breeding so he was happy to breed anything!!!

[cathleenc]

sorry, didn't catch the cross-species thing.

[goatkid]

The people I know who have had both species found that they got along. One friend chose to sell her sheep, however, when all the scrapie laws came into effect. You get put into a more suspect category if your goats are exposed to sheep.

[Feral Nature]

We used to run Nubians with Barbados (hair sheep) and they did fine. They had huge acreage and lived mostly on browse. We used cattle minerals and the sheep had no problems with it.