Hello All, I have a question that I think I know but thought I would check. I have 3 Nubians and I would like to put them into the garden to clean out all the "stuff" before I do my final fertilizing and cover with leaves. Its okay for them to eat all the old pepper, tomatos, and gourd plants isn't it? I would think it would be good eating for them for a few days? Karole

-- Karole (Biz3boymom@aol.ocm), October 01, 2001

Answers

Hi Karole,

I know how tempting it is to put the goats in the garden to do the work for you, but there are some plants that they shouldn't eat and tomatoes plants are included. Potato plants are toxic also. They are in the deadly 'nightshade' family. Cornell University has an informative website regarding toxic plants.

-- Charleen in WNY (harperhill@eznet.net), October 01, 2001.

Please do not put your goats in the garden if you want to keep them. I lost a goat--he jumped the fence that we have around it--and ate something-- I know that our chickens won't touch the potatoes nor the tomatoes but maybe the goat wasn't smart enough. He died of poisoning.

-- (stephanie.wilkerson@experian.com), October 01, 2001.

I know about them being part of the nightshade family,, but Ive had deer eat them 2 years in a row now. Deer and goats are closely related arent they?

-- stan (sopal999@yahoo.com), October 01, 2001.

How interesting....I didn't know that tomatoes and potatoes are toxic, we routinley pull that stuff from our garden and feed it to our livestock, pigs, goats chickens and cows. We grow watermelons especially for our pigs, they love them. My goats will eat whole tomatoes like candy, and I've never had one get sick. We raise Nubians. CJ

-- CJ (cjtinkle@getgoin.net), October 01, 2001.

It goes with the green in leaves, roots and tubers of the nightshade family (hence potato tubers that turn green are poisonous where green). This includes potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. As it happens, any potato (or nightshade, or tobacco or nicotinia) fruit that develop are poisonous too, but not tomato or pepper or capsicum fruit.

Some melon or cucumber or squash or pumpkin plants have a poisonous alkaloid in the leaves and vines, but it is bitter, so given any choice in foods stock will avoid them if they contain the poison.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), October 02, 2001.

I can only speak of goats & chickens, I don't have any other livestock. Don is right about the fruits & vegetables being ok, it's the plants, roots & green tubers that are toxic. If in doubt, don't. Here's an informative site for you

www.library.uiuc.edu/vex/toxic/comlist.htm

-- Charleen in WNY (harperhill@eznet.net), October 02, 2001.

geez, i'm not trying to sound like a smartaleck here or anything, but how do goats survive in the "wild" without us to tell them what is poison or not?

-- marcee (thathope@mwt.net), October 04, 2001.