Do Goats Really Eat Anything? Goat Diet Myths and Facts

Why do goats have a reputation for eating everything?

The reputation comes from goat behavior, not goat digestion. A goat explores its surroundings with its mobile upper lip and mouth, much as a person explores with their fingers. A goat that finds a coat sleeve, a rope or a sheet of paper will often grab it, pull it and chew it to find out what it is.

Many everyday objects also contain plant material. Paper, cardboard and cotton are made from plant fibers, so to a goat they may smell and taste a little like food. Goats are also bold and agile, so they reach places other farm animals cannot, which makes their nibbling more noticeable.

Put together, these habits created the cartoon image of a goat munching on tin cans, laundry and boots. Farmers who work with goats every day describe something quite different: an animal that wanders past plenty of food in search of the best mouthfuls.

What do goats really eat?

Goats are herbivores. In the wild and on open range they spend much of their feeding time on woody and broad-leaved plants:

• Leaves and buds of shrubs and young trees
• Twigs and bark, especially in winter
• Weeds and herbs such as thistles, dock and dandelion
• Vines and brambles, including blackberry and wild rose
• Grasses, usually as a smaller part of the diet

Goats are ruminants with a four-chambered stomach. Microbes in the first chamber, the rumen, ferment tough plant fiber, and the goat later brings food back up as cud to chew again. This lets goats get nourishment from coarse, woody plants that horses or people could not digest.

Browsing vs grazing: how goats differ from sheep and cattle

Livestock scientists divide plant-eaters into grazers and browsers. Grazers, such as cattle and sheep, mainly eat grass and low plants close to the ground. Browsers feed on leaves, shoots and twigs from shrubs and trees. Goats are mostly browsers, although they are flexible and will graze when grass is the best food available.

Several features help goats browse:

• A narrow muzzle and a split, very mobile upper lip that can pick single leaves from between thorns.
• The habit of standing on their hind legs to reach branches, and even climbing into trees.
• A liking for bitter plants that many grazers avoid.

Because goats and sheep prefer different plants, farmers in Africa and the Middle East often keep them together. The two species share a pasture without competing too much for the same food.

Are goats picky eaters?

Yes, in an important way. Goats are highly selective. Given a choice, they pick the most nutritious parts of plants, such as fresh leaves and growing tips, and move on quickly. Animal Diversity Web notes that goats generally avoid grass soiled with dung. Many goat keepers also report that goats refuse hay that has been trampled or has fallen on the ground.

This pickiness is one reason goats are good at surviving in poor, dry country. Instead of filling up on low-quality food, they roam widely and choose the best bits from a large number of different plants.

Being choosy does not make goats safe from every plant. Like other livestock, goats can be poisoned by some plants, which is why the idea that goats “can eat anything” is not just wrong but potentially harmful to the animals.

The tin-can myth

The story that goats eat tin cans has been around for well over a century, especially in cartoons and children’s books. There is no evidence that goats eat metal. The most widely accepted explanation is that goats were seen chewing on old cans to get at the paper labels, and possibly at the glue that held them on. The labels disappeared, the cans stayed behind, and the legend grew.

Similar stories exist about goats eating clothes from washing lines. Goats certainly do pull at hanging laundry, partly from curiosity and partly because cotton is a plant fiber, but they do not need or benefit from it.

Goats as natural weed control

Goats’ love of shrubs and weeds has become useful. Across the western United States, herds of goats are hired to clear dry brush on hillsides around towns, reducing fuel for wildfires. This approach, called targeted grazing, is also used to control invasive plants such as Himalayan blackberry, multiflora rose, kudzu and leafy spurge.

Goats can reach steep, rocky slopes where machines cannot go, and they eat thorny and irritating plants, including poison ivy, without trouble. In southern Africa, goats such as the Boer goat in the photo above are used to stop thornbush from regrowing on cleared grassland, a problem known as bush encroachment.

The same appetite can cause damage. Feral goats on islands without predators have stripped forests and native plants, from the Galápagos to the Hawaiian Islands. Their browsing is so effective that conservationists have had to remove goats to let native vegetation recover.

Myths and facts about what goats eat

Myth: goats eat garbage. Goats may investigate litter, but they do not seek it out as food, and plastic and metal are dangerous to them.

Myth: goats only eat grass. Grass is just one part of their diet. Goats are mainly browsers of leaves, shoots and shrubs.

Fact: goats prefer variety. A browsing goat takes a few bites from one plant, then moves to another, sampling many species in one feeding session.

Fact: goats chew cud for hours. Like cows, goats spend a large part of each day ruminating, bringing food back up to chew it again before it is fully digested.