# Goats love cherries!!



## Dana (Dec 7, 2009)

We are in full season with our Michigan sweet cherry trees. They are in the goats' pasture and I hear them crunching on them- pits and all. I sweep out their cement floor in the barn and there are nanny berries and very cleaned off cherry pits! Sometimes I find the pits floating in their water buckets. 

We thought they were pooping out the pits, but come to find out they cud them up and spit them out :rofl


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## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

Pit spitting goats-who'd a thunk it! hehehe


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

I had a lot of peaches last year that I shared with my goats. Some of them ate them whole, but take them into their mouths and the pit would come out the side of the mouth...very amusing. Most would chomp half the peach, then pick up the other half and eat it off the pit.


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## goatkid (Oct 26, 2007)

Be careful with letting goats eat cherries. They can get cyanide poisoning from eating pits and dried leaves from cherry trees.


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## Qz Sioux (Feb 21, 2009)

goatkid said:


> Be careful with letting goats eat cherries. They can get cyanide poisoning from eating pits and dried leaves from cherry trees.


Same with peaches!


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

Yes, I think they CAN, but the question is DO they? I mean, my father-in-law (without my knowledge until later) dumped a whole bucket of peaches in my buck pen last summer, more than they even wanted to eat, and they didn't even get diarrhea. The peach, cherry, and other fruit trees are right outside the pasture (or in one section they are inside it with fencing protecting them); the goats eat the leaves all the time, probably a little bark sometimes, maybe some pits; and have never had issues. I'd be more worried about them choking on the pits than dieing from the poison in them...besides they probably would pass right through.  (but maybe not in a ruminant, i dunno...)


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

goatkid said:


> They can get cyanide poisoning from eating pits and dried leaves from cherry trees.


Actually, it's wilted leaves that contain the most cyanide. We have a large cherry tree in our horse pasture. Any time we have a storm or high winds, we walk the pasture to pick up any branches that have fallen. Although I do worry a tad when the leaves drop in the fall, we haven't had any issues.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Anyone dumping large amounts of any kind of food into my pens would get the worst kind of lashing.


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

smithurmonds said:


> Anyone dumping large amounts of any kind of food into my pens would get the worst kind of lashing.


Agreed. I tried not to be too mean, as he thought he was being nice, but now he always asks before giving them anything, even rose bush cuttings.


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## Dana (Dec 7, 2009)

I don't know where I read it, but I thought it said Mock Cherry leaves-wilted- are poisonous to goats. I never worried about my cherry trees, leaves or pits, or anything. I know there are a few mock cherry trees in with our cherry trees and are in the pasture. My goats have never been sick. They have even eaten Yew and other "supposed" poisonous plants too. I guess they are just only took a few bites and moved on.


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## Annie (Jun 10, 2012)

We have a lot of wild cherry trees here, many many that are over 50' tall. It IS the wilted green leaves that are highly toxic. The dead fall leaves are not a problem, nor leaves that goats reach up and bite off the growing trees.

I always cringe when we have a wind storm, knowing I MUST walk the pasture and gather as much fallen cherry leaves/branches as I can.

I once lost a 4 yr nubian doe to wilted cherry leaves, within 20 minutes. I had been out walking with the herd, left and went to the house. Son came in shortly afterwards alarming me that Pebbles was dead. Found her in pasture with wilted cherry leaves around her and in her foaming mouth.


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