# Goat healthy fencerows



## Ozark Lady (Mar 21, 2010)

I had a book, that was a real old one.
My house burned in 2008 and I lost that dear old book.
I remember they featured fencerows, and great herbs for animal health.
I have the traditional wire fences, but I would like to plant healthy snacks just outside the fences, that the goats could browse (prune) the extra growth.
I recall there was honeysuckle, and various small fruits and herbs.
I have elderberries, blackberries, and raspberries, that are near the fence now, the goats reach through and keep them from growing too close.
What other plants would you recommend planting in fencerows, for goats to browse?


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## Poverty Knob Goats (Apr 13, 2010)

I don't know about the book or plants but I can sympathize about the fire. We lost our house in 2000 to a fire. A lot of memories and alot of stuff disappeared in a few minutes.


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## Ozark Lady (Mar 21, 2010)

Do you ever stop going to get something, like a book, and have to stop and remember that it no longer exists? It has been 2 years, and I still have to stop and think, was that before or after the fire that I got thus and such.


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## teddybear (Oct 26, 2007)

Do you remember the title of the book? Even an approximate title? I'll see if I can help you find it. Always happy to help! Don


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## prairie nights (Jan 16, 2009)

Mine LOVE grapevines. They looked very pretty on the fence of my vegetable garden until the goats moved in there, well, now all the leaves are eaten. They were wild grapes. Definitely a favorite on the goat menu.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Will youpon grow in your area? It makes a nice hedge and we laugh when seeing it at nuseries beause it is the understory plant in our wood here. It's very high in calcium and the goats will eat the leaves and tender new stems but rarely kill it because it's very tangled woody. I grow comfrey, although I simply pick leaves, maybe a very mature plant would be strong enough to take the yanking, mine are in the garden so they seem to be very shallow rooted. What an excellent idea! Vicki


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Fast growing palatable goat favorites here are Maples- sweet gum-crepe myrtle-pears- persimmons.
There are reports of wild cherry and sand plum being toxic but my 30 years of letting them browse those 2 here means it is regional or use of common name confusion. The system I saw that worked the best was a controlled browse area planted in the center of a grass pasture with cattle panels all around. They could only eat enough to keep it pruned and not kill it. They will bark most things and kill them quickly. This set up allowed the ends of the long browse strip to open so the owner could go in and prune and toss branches out for them to eat so as to keep faster growing things in check. It was such a great solution to providing the browse they prefer in a place where there was nothing but open pasture.


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## Ashley (Oct 25, 2007)

> There are reports of wild cherry and sand plum being toxic but my 30 years of letting them browse those 2 here means it is regional or use of common name confusion.


My understanding is the wilted leaves of any pitted fruit tree are toxic to cattle, goats horses etc. So they are fine until a storm or something breaks a limb and it's not cleaned up quickly.

Yea, mine eat poke which is supposed to be toxic as well.


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## Oat Bucket Farm (Mar 2, 2009)

Mine love pecan,oak and mulberry. We bring them leaves and really thin branches.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Ashley is correct on the pit fruit risk. Eating them directly from the tree is ok, but wilted can be very toxic. Completely dry is safest of all.

Love this topic! This is what I spend a lot of my time thinking about, ways to provide forage and browse in small spaces, without ALWAYS providing "Room Service" as my goats are lousy tippers. 

What they are liable to tip is tip me over being greedy! :rofl

There will be huge regional differences in these plants, like I couldn't think of what Vicki was referring to with "youpon" until I found 

"Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) is an evergreen shrub or small tree that is common in the moist pine
and hardwood forests of the south Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain and the savanna scrublands of eastcentral
Texas. Ilex, the largest genus of the family Aquifoliaceae, contains 14 species native to the
United States (Harrar and Harrar 1962). Of the 6 holly species found in the southern United States,
including American holly (I. opaca), dahoon (I. cassine), and possumhaw (I. decidua), yaupon is the
most valuable to wildlife (Halls and Ripley 1961). Its thicket-forming characteristics make it
excellent cover for many birds, and its fruits and foliage provide a year-round food source for
white-tailed deer (Halls 1977).
Yaupon has no commercial timber value, but its bright red fruits and dark green foliage give it ornamental value as a landscaping plant (Vines 1960). Dried yaupon leaves, which have a high caffeine content, were traditionally brewed by Native Americans in a bitter, medicinal tea called "black drink" or "cassine" (Vines 1960, Bailey and Bailey 1976). The long history of this tea (Spanish explorers recorded its use by east Texas natives in the early 1500’s)
originated several local names for yaupon, including emetic holly, south-sea tea, Carolina tea, Appalachian tea, Indian black drink, chocolato del Indio, and Yopan del Indio."

Oh great, just what I want, goats on CAFFEINE!! :rofl

Otherwise it sounds like pretty good nutritional browse and a deer staple for warmer areas, its not very hardy. Love to learn something new, thanks!

Temperate hardy woody browse, mine love Forsythia, any dogwoods and there's a lot of shrubby ones beyond the trees, Photinia, Birch/Alder any of the pioneer species trees that grow FAST and will often remain shrubby with browsing, our wild hazel (or the valuable ones, they like those too! but thinking of woody things that will stay shrubby with browsing), maples as Buckrun/Lee mentioned (careful to avoid too much Acer rubrum), the shrubby Loniceras like L nitida & pileata, Physocarpus, any wild roses or Rubus (berries, same Rosaceae family), also Ribes (currants & gooseberries), shrubby oaks, any conifers except Taxus (Yew), Amelanchier, Berberis, Hawthorns are a big favorite, Eleagnus, Willows of course in wet areas, Mulberry, flowering quince or pretty much any of the traditional hedgrow plants...

that's all I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more...


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## Ozark Lady (Mar 21, 2010)

I found the book. It has been revised. I think the one I had was from 1952... I told you it was old.
But, I looked through the pages that they let you see before buying... and that is it!
It went into detail about herbs, common eating ones, that were so excellent as browse for your animals. And it covered more than just one species.
Every place I look, once you get past postage it is roughly $14.00.
Wanna bet that I own it in a week or so? 
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Herbal-Handbook-Farm-Stable/dp/0571161162

With all the references to healing herbs, I remembered the hedgerows... you can see what really meant alot to me. It does tell about alot of plants. I doubt that some of the claims for the plants would work, but if they are harmless, what does it hurt?

I know blackberry and raspberry leaves are healing to goats, so I keep some dried for them, just in case. And I use that in addition to... not instead of regular meds.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

I have to disagree with the wilted damaged leaves theory. 
My goats roam acres of mixed deciduous evergreen browse and pasture with wild cherry and wild plum and even a horticultural plum that is 30 years old and they eat the leaves off the ground- the fruit whole- the leaves with black spot on them in wet years and whatever else condition they are in and have for 30 years. But...they grew up doing it and that could be the factor that makes the difference. I don't see 'very toxic' here.


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## Ashley (Oct 25, 2007)

The leaves off the ground are ok, because the plant has released them. It's only if there is a broken limb or something and only if they eat it before the leaves are actually dry.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

I have to say that the whole "the leaves are fine on the tree, not fine if wilted, but fine if dry" makes no sense to me whatsoever. How does something get into the leaf (or become concentrated in the leaf) when it is wilted that wasn't there when it was on the tree and somehow goes away when the leaf dries? I could see the dried leaves being a problem when the rest is not, or the fresh leaves being a problem, or even "fresh + wilted" or "dry + wilted," but the "wilted only"? I'm just not getting it.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

You have to consider where these reports came from.
There is no concerted testing of things like this it is all anecdotal. Say like a guy moved starving cows in a drought into a wooded area and they tramped around devouring everything in sight and maybe had some problems....I have never found anywhere that says how they came up with this idea which we looked in to a bunch since we do have those plants in abundance here. But then Diane's goats eat Chinaberry !!! So go figure!


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Good grief folks!

all pit fruit vegetation contains prunasin, a cyanide precursor, amounts vary with season, conditions, exact species.

When the leaf stops photosynthesizing properly, those prunasin molecules split and start becoming free cyanide (also called prussic acid or hydrocyanic acid) very quickly. That is a volatile compound and dissapates as a gas into the air within a few hours to a couple days in some conditons. Hence the dry ones on the ground are ok.

Cyanide acts quickly, suffocating the animal at the cellular level. They can eat some roulette amount, especially mixed with other forage like Buckrun/Lee/others report, but in the right conditons, death is quite rapid, and we have no easy mechanism to know when the risk is especially high although many reports of death young leaves.

Here's one decent link:
http://www.vet.purdue.edu/toxic/plant46.htm

and another on cassava feed, the cyanide part is about halfway down.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/t0554e/T0554E08.htm


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## Ashley (Oct 25, 2007)

There have been several people lose livestock that way. I know someone near here lost 4 or 5 horses in a day after a storm because of it. I don't think they were starved. Of course, we all know horses tend to be more sensitive to these things than goats.

Isn't there a type of grass that is the same way? Can't remember now, but if it's bruised it's bad, but once dry in hay, if it wasn't bruised before harvest, is ok? But before it is dry, it is poisonous.


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## Ozark Lady (Mar 21, 2010)

Would everyone please take a small branch from their tree and go google it?
I was always taught that a certain tree was a wild cherry.
But, I noticed, the fruit is not in clusters, it is single. I went and googled it a few weeks ago, and I am brain dead today, I can't remember what it was. But, it was not cherry.
My goats always loved that type of tree.
It could be the common names that are causing the problem.
If your goats are eating "cherry trees" and doing fine, look closely at the fruit, are they in clusters? Mine weren't but old timers still will argue it is a wild cherry, and it isn't.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Ok, well that makes sense. No "good grief!" needed...it's not like I was arguing about whether the leaves could be harmful, just that no one had ever given an explanation of why they should be harmful only if wilted but ok otherwise.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Stacey, sorry, that wasn't directed at you, just at the whole topic when its such a simple and well understood and easily found answer, compared to a lot of the goat specific stuff on here.

OzarkLady/MaryAnn, yes common names are always a problem. Its anything in the genus "Prunus" and there are plent of single fruited, non-clustered ones in there. If it has a pit, like an apricot, cherry, plum... suspect it. The degree of risk varies of course, but they all have the potential in the right circumstances.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

> have the potential to produce toxic levels of cyanide under certain conditions.


So I guess we have never met those criteria here.
Lots of qualifiers in that statement.
Thanks for the links to the chemistry of it.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

yeah, that's the big roulette game with the Prunus genus, you can go for years with no problems, then the right conditions collide and you have dead livestock FAST.

certainly eating a big mix of stuff reduces the risk, that's why there's so many stories of loss after storms, they come out hungry after hunkering down, and here's this big treat fallen branch! On an empty stomach definitely increases the risk as it will hit all at once vs being slowly processed with lots of other stuff. And the cyanide makes it smell and taste sort of sweeter, like that marzipan sort of smell, so its extra appealing to pig out on in those circumstances. Your everyday browse is lower risk, but Prunus is always a bit of a dice game.


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## NWgoats (Jul 17, 2008)

Lacia, I see you did mention Acer rubrum. I had purchased some and before I planted
them in the pasture, I found out that they "might" be poisonous to the goats. Since
I am paranoid, I got rid of them rather than take a chance. However, I am curious as
to why that particular maple and not the others is chancy? The leaf color?


We also had wild/sand cherry trees and I took them all out. (Wasn't really a big deal,
they were scroungy things that didn't provide any shade anyway.) 

I still have lots of Hawthorn trees out there and they are tough as nails. Got one that
is actually thriving in a foot and a half of water for most of the year. The goats eat them,
but not extremely (they are a bit thorny ) and they have taken most of the bark off
a couple of them and the silly trees are still growing and thriving. (not to mention that
they bloom beautifully, attract bees and provide berries for the birds) My goats don't
eat/like the berries at all.


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## Ozark Lady (Mar 21, 2010)

I wonder?
There used to be a gravel road, and in the fencerow, were miles of wild plums. The owner invited folks to stop and harvest. I got many bags of them. Made great jelly.
Then suddenly they were all gone. Totally, clean fencerow.
It just never occurred to me, that perhaps the farmer had a livestock loss or learned of the dangers and removed them.
I still want my own cherry trees, and wild plums, but, I will definitely want to double fence the ones that I plant, for the trees sake as well as the animals.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

NWgoats said:


> Lacia, I see you did mention Acer rubrum. I had purchased some and before I planted
> them in the pasture, I found out that they "might" be poisonous to the goats. Since
> I am paranoid, I got rid of them rather than take a chance. However, I am curious as
> to why that particular maple and not the others is chancy? The leaf color?...still have lots of Hawthorn trees out there..The goats eat them...taken most of the bark off...still growing and thriving...bloom beautifully, attract bees and provide berries for the birds) My goats don't eat/like the berries at all.


Acer rubrum doesn't have red leaves usually. Most of the red colored leaves are Japanese maples which are fine. Botanists like to mess with people's heads I think :biggrin

Its also commonly called Swamp or Soft Maple.

They are called Acer rubrum from the red stems, that's one ID characteristic. The main identifier is the leaf shape, its like a coloring book tulip shape, not cut/lobed as deeply as most maples. Leaves are usually green with white undersides. Often spectacular fall color, which also contributes to the naming probably. It has undertones of red pigments that really shine in the fall, but in summer they are mostly green.

The toxin is speculated on but not clearly known, debated as various tanins/oxidates, some evidence for cyanosis compounds too and cases where wilted leaves seemed to cause more damage, but many cases of fresh ones too, unlike Prunus.

The effects of the toxin are red blood cell damage, hemolysis, hemolytic anemia. Symptoms show up 1-2 days after ingestion, normally too late to stop the damage. If caught early treatment with methylene blue or activated charcoal has some evidence of helping. Symptoms are lethargy, dark urine going to brown (dead blood cells), jaudice, then death from kidney and liver damage.

There's some evidence that it affects single stomached animals more than ruminants. I wouldn't freak out if my goats ate a few mouthfuls, its not like Rhody/Azalea, but if I had a lot of it in a pasture, I'd make sure they had limited access to it.


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## Qvrfullmidwife (Oct 25, 2007)

regarding raspberry leaves--red raspberry leaves are a uterine tonic and very good for pregnant mammals of all kinds (4 and 2 legged type) but as a tonic it is best partaken of daily, not jujst on an 'as need' basis. high in calcium, iron and helps the uterus contract efficiently, reducing bleeding afterwards. it strengthens the uterus so you are less likely to see abortions or preterm labor.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

I think I could have acres of raspberries and blueberries and not not have enough...


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