# Fig trees



## informative (Aug 24, 2012)

Just received our trees from the forestry service and got about half of them in the ground - working on planting the rest either tomorrow or maybe Monday. I do enjoy the new auger - keep thinking the ants must be jealous 

Currently we are adding Mulberry, Black Cherry and a row of wild American plums for a thicket to the north. Was contemplating a row of fig trees as well closer to the grassy poor yielding forage areas.

This raised a new question. I'd read somewhere that goats (and sheep) love fig leaves (fig trees) for part of their forage. True? Anyone had any experience with this - maybe found one breed of fig like "Turkey fig" or other better than another and so forth?


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## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

Goats love all trees. I don't know that I've heard of one they won't eat!


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## Twillingate Farm (Oct 26, 2007)

Apple, Pear, Peach, Plum, Walnut, Hickory, Maple, Oak, Beech, Hemlock, White Pine, Raspberry... They keep saying they'll get back to me which one they like best.
:biggrin


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

Willow, locust, poplar. The only tree I have seen them not get really crazy for, but they'll still eat it fine, is Russian Olive. It is a great winter forage though, because it keeps its leaves for a long long time, and the little berry things also stay on for a long time, and they eat those too. They also don't care much for sagebrush, but will nibble it if nothing else is around. They do like bitterbrush a little better than sagebrush.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

They will eat a fig to the ground. They like the wood better than the leaves which have latex and make their stools loose. They will eat a certain amt of leaf but they will chew the bark and twigs to oblivion. If you are growing a thicket for them to eat you might need to fence it so they can be regulated on consumption because we used them to clear the underbrush in an oak flat and it went from impenetrable jungle to a walking park in very short order. 

A sustainable browse row is planted in the middle of a pasture area with fencing around it so they can reach in to a particular depth but not get to every part of the plant. Really neet in practice. I kid you not tho- they can pack it away when it is something they like and they love browse. I am not sure if black cherry is included in the cherry toxic warnings but you might want to check that out. The story is they are toxic when damaged or wilted. Ours have cleared the woods of wild cherry with no issues over many years and so I am not sure it isn't info translated from horse lore to goats.

Mulberry is a huge favorite here but again you risk loosing the entire tree unless it is well established if you let them self serve. Good luck!
Lee


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

Does anybody plant trees that put up lots of suckers, you know the ones you don't want in your yard, in the goat pasture? I had an idea to plant something like poplar, aspen, etc, fence around the main tree, and then they could have any of the suckers that come up.


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## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

I want to plant willow. I saw a article about growing willow in the magazine TSC puts out. You can grow it in rows like a crop and use it for basket making. My thought was to grow it on a section of our land that isn't accessible to the goats, and just harvest it as forage a little at a time.


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## jdavenport (Jul 19, 2012)

We have black willow in a swampy part of the yard and it grows like crazy, but the goats and deer eat every bit of it. There are times when we go for walks, that the goats race over to it and just crunch and munch away. I don't fence them in that part of the yard because it tends to be wet and I'm afraid they would bloat eating too much of that willow.
Angie-black willow is really easy to grow, just put some spring cuttings ( cut after flowering when the leaves are full) about 12"long, dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in a 5 gallon bucket. Keep the dirt very wet, like a swamp. They should sprout in a few months, with new branches, then you can put them outside.


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## informative (Aug 24, 2012)

Thanks for the great info. I will plan to limit their access. We already have a good number of black locust and some other thorny type trees which create a set of impassable tree lines which had never occurred to me they could make use of those. It is worse than that the trees with the huge spikes have vines wrapping around that are also loaded with thorns and try to grab you and trip you up to pull you into the thorn trees - if the goats want to chew those to the ground I will thank them for it.


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## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

They will clear that out for you. You'll be left with just mature trees. That's why they are using goats for wild fire prevention. They are great at that job


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