Up to now I've been raising and putting up fruits and vegetables, and am thinking of getting livestock. I've been reading up on sheep and goats, and understand you can run them together. However I've heard that they have to be penned separately at night and during mating season. Can anyone tell me more about that, or suggest further reading?

-- Martha A. Shelley (marthaas@sylviaa.com), September 22, 2001

Answers

Might want to join goatandsheeprancher over at groups.yahoo.com Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 22, 2001.

I thought this was going to be another End Times posting...

I had two Nubian wether goats and kept them with my Romney ewes and wethers. I must say that the goats were pretty aggressive and running them together was not my first choice, but they did okay. During breeding season, there was some commotion between all the boys of both species but it resolved eventually.

I currently do not keep them together. I have them separated by about 20 miles, actually...I think that's a pretty good distance...

-- sheepish (WA) (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), September 22, 2001.

I have had sheep in with my goats which horrified all my goat loving friends, (don't you know sheep have diseases that can transfer to goats!!) Also the sheep were very mean to my precious goats they rammed them hard, so until I have more seperate facilities the sheep are temporarily not a part of our farm.

-- sherrie clifton (Bryrpatch35@aol.com), September 23, 2001.

I've had the opposite experience -- twice I had horned goats gore a sheep. If all animals of both breeds are hornless, they probably can't do much serious harm (if they are close to the same size). I *have* heard, from people who've experienced it, that a buck goat or ram sheep can and will breed the females of the other species. The offspring develop for only a few weeks and then abort, which is obviously an undesireable thing to have happen, so keep your males away from females of the other breed.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 23, 2001.

I have two wethers that I keep with my ewes. When I had a ram, they would keep him company when he wasn't allowed inwith the girls. I separate my ewes from all other animals when lambing time is near.

-- Patricia Ramsey (woolspin@aol.com), September 23, 2001.

I have had them together since Feb when I got my first 2 ewes, and had no problem, but.........now that I have 2 new sheep, and one a ram, I separated them from the goats. I will have the ram in a separate pen with a wether goat for company in a few months. I think the problem comes when you have pregnant gals together and they get rough.

-- Jenny Pipes (Auntjenny6@aol.com), September 23, 2001.

Martha the biggy here is breeding and also nutrition. Sheep have very sluggish metabolisms, therefore they need less of everything, vitamin and mineral wise, and also wormers or antibiotic wise as your goats. They will also have problems with parasties before the goats will. Goats have very quick metabolisms. If feeding the goats sheep, feed, minerals, wormer or antibiotic amounts you will have great sheep and very mediocre goats. Feeding your sheep the minerals etc. that goats need would give you great goats and dead sheep :) Also bucks breeding your ewe's or rams breeding your does, will only result in abortions, which can loose you a whole year of production. No live kids or lambs could put you out of business quickly! So ......yes you could manage this, kids and lambs get along famously, perhaps weaning all your kids into the same pastures, but once into production or nearing production age, nutritional problems start to creep in. It's very easy to keep young yearling stock looking great, the real test of any breeders abilities comes with does kidding and weaning. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 24, 2001.

Your biggest problem would be that you can't feed them together. Sheep accumulate copper in the liver more readily than other farm animals. Goat feed has a lot more copper in it than sheep feed. You don't want to wind up with copper toxicity in your sheep.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), September 24, 2001.

When I had one of Terri's does and her buck here for a visit to try and gnaw down some brush, the only problem I had was that the goats are pushier than my sheep when it comes to feeding time. Other than that they pretty much hung out with the sheep peacefully. I did find the separate feeding a hassle because the sheep always wanted the goats feed and vice versa. Made me nervous for fear of copper toxicity. Now that the buck is older and back at Terri's place I would think twice about running a mature buck with anyone! I hope to buy a young doe from Terri to help with that brush situation since goats are better browsers than sheep.

-- Alison in NS (aproteau@istar.ca), September 24, 2001.

I only have a few animals now (2 goats and a sheep) but at the petting farm where I used to work we ran the sheep and goats together all the time. I milk my does so they are grained on the milkstand, while the ewe is grained in a separate stall. At the petting zoo, we grained them all with a 16% sweet feed, and penned them by size so that larger goats and sheep were fed together and smaller ones were penned together. We had a separate area where we could grain animals that were not aggressive enough at the feed pan, or that had much higher requirements due to gestation or lactation. At the petting zoo, all the animals were either disbudded, or had horns that curled back along the head (like angoras, or horned dorsets). At home, I have a saanen doe and a kindergoat doe that are disbudded, and a barbados ewe that is horned (the horns lay along the head). When I had this ewe's mother, she was disbudded and was the low animal in the pecking order, but wasn't unduly harrassed. Having horns gives this ewe a little more of an edge, so that I now have a circular pecking order (saanen is dominant over kindergoat, who is dominant over barbados, who is dominant over saanen), so my barn is actually fairly peaceful. I breed one doe for a fall kidding and one doe for a spring kidding, so I stall breed my does. The same goes for the ewe. At the petting farm I had a small horned pygmy doe for a short period of time and we penned her with a very large tunis ewe, and the doe gored the ewe, so I wouldn't pen pointy horned animals with smooth horned or disbudded animals of any type. The lady who owns the buck I use lost her second buck last year when it was out on lease to someone who kept their sheep in with their goats. They have a ram and it rammed the goat, causing soft tissue damage to it's leg that couldn't be fully repaired so that the buck could no longer mount. In all of this, I guess the main reccommendation that I would make is to know your animals and facilities and decide what you can safely do that will result in the healthiest happiest animals.

-- Sheryl in Me (radams@sacoriver.net), September 25, 2001.