What seed mix for goats?

[LFRJ]

We've been preparing for goats now, for a couple of years. Fencing the biggest issue. We've now fenced in a triangular area, 100ft each side. We are preparing more 'pastures' for them - this is just the first, the smallest, and most wooded.

In our parts, blackberries grow in hedges sometimes 8-10 ft high! We are clearing much of it just to get the fence line through. (There will be plenty left over for goats to munch on, trust me). We can stifle the blackberries from shooting back through the soil if we can get seed down and started quickly.

Not sure what all we can grow, - it's shady and moist - but what grass seed mix or plants should we sow which will give them plenty to browse on? Also, we'd heard that ferns are poisonous to them. Are they really that deadly? Seems if ferns were pure death, we wouldn't have much luck with goats at all in the Pac NW, yet lots of people have them.

Thanks in advance.

[mpillow]

Mine eat ferns, rhubarb and other so-called poisonous ornamental plants....never poisoned a one of them but the did kill the rhubarb!

Shumways seed company carries some pasture mixes as does Fedco here in Maine...I've even bought some deer plot mixes marked down...

[Alice In TX/MO]

Goats are not actually grazers. They are browsers like deer and prefer brush and leaves from scrub oak, etc.

[betsy h.]

A goat's digestive system is more like a deer's digestive system.

There is a great seed place down in GA called Adams-Briscoe seed company- abseed.com

They have several different mixes for forage at different times of the year, plus pasture grasses, etc. And they ship. If nothing else, look for places like them on the net that are closer to you-