geophagy

[BohemianWaxwing]

My acre lot in town is mostly sand soil. I recently built a cobb oven and imported a couple buckets of clay from the river to mix with my soil to get the right consistency. I had been using the kid's Red Flyer wagon as a stool to reach the back of the oven (on the corner of my porch) during the construction process so it had a good spattering of dried clay bits all over it (those wagons have got to be as good as a tractor on a small lot, eh!?).

Yesterday I took the wagon into the goat's paddock to haul back more sawdust for my toilets and the goats were both all over the wagon gobbling the clay like it was the black oil sunflower seeds that they love to steal from the chickens.

They have access to a mineral block and a reasonable amount of forage for two NGD. Healthy as can be and bounce around all day. Do I need to be worried that they're missing something in their diets? Is this normal?

[Frosted Mini's]

Goats are curious and will "taste" most anything, which is why they have the reputation that they do for eating everything. I doubt they are missing anything, they just like it. If they are kids, I'd say it's very normal...my kids eat a lot of dirt it seems like...clay, dirt, similar thing. Maybe it was salty. At any rate, won't hurt them any, and they probably are fine if they are healthy and coats are soft. You may want to try a loose mineral though, especially if you are going to breed them in the future, as goats don't usually get enough mineral out of a hard block.