can i keep goats w/ chicks?

[daisycullen2003]

hi all,

getting ready to move my 8 week old chicks outside. wondering if i can keep them in same area w/ my 2 miniature goats? maybe they are too young and will get trampled? has anyone ever done this?

thanks!
lisa

 

[freemotion]

I keep my goats and chickens together, but I let them grow a bit more. Not because of the goats, but because we have hawks here, so they need to be MUCH bigger than a pigeon before they go out in the pasture.

The only challenge I had was keeping the small goats out of the chicken's pop door. You MUST keep the goats out of the chicken's feed.

Sure, they get stepped on now and then, especially if a goat is runnning away from another goat! But no one has gotten noticably hurt, just a bruised toe and a squawk.

 

[kimmyh]

Yes, but you need to keep the chicken food away from the goats, and give the chickens a place to escape goat harassment. A lot of people keep them together, but it can be hard to keep the goat food clean with chickens pooping in and on everything.

 

[freemotion]

Yes, you need to cover your hay rack and not put your feeders/waterers under anything that the chickens can roost on. I find that mine don't roost much during the day, and I train them to go into the coop at night, so the only issues are during that training period....right now.....when I have to hand-carry the stragglers every night back into the coop. I am down to about 4 now....two on the hay rack, and two on the half-wall dividing the stalls. It was 10-12 just a couple of weeks ago!

I've given up on the guineas. Thank goodness we are down to two.

 

[utterguy]

I do not recommend goats and chickens in the same area, if the area is small and confined area, large acreage is fine. I do agree that water and food should be kept away from the chickens and should be feed separate as chicken poop can spread disease and it can fail the respiratory system of a goat. Goats like to graze and lay around when needed and if there is a lot of dirt it will not be good for the goat as chickens like to scratch and bring up the dirt from below grass. I also recommend keeping the confined area very clean, as the water needs to be cleaned and changed daily and hay should be sifted or replaced often and if you use a bedding for the goats it should be replaced on a regular basis.

 

[daisycullen2003]

thanks, everyone, for your responses. i am starting to think that it is indeed not a good idea to keep them together. thanks for the reminder to keep my chicks in their coop because of hawks! i get so impatient! so for right now, all is okay since chickens are in coop, but i think the area that we have fenced is too small to keep both together, plus i don't know how the heck i am going to keep them out of each other's areas.

it's amazing how much is learned day to day when raising animals! i didn't do this growing up so am new to this life, but it's such a process and a lot of fun, too.

 

[freemotion]

You will experiment and figure out what works best for you, in your unique situation. And you will make some mistakes! It is part of the learning process and part of the fun, too. As you can see on this forum, there are a LOT of different opinions of how things MUST be done.