# grass clippings



## imported_ashley (Jun 9, 2011)

Can goats (a month old and up) eat grass clippings? They love the yard grass, is it okay to give them a few hand fulls of grass clippings?


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## Bob Jones (Aug 21, 2009)

I am assuming that the gist of the question is the age at which they may eat grass clippings since goats can eat nearly anything.

The rule is that they need bacteria to digest whatever they eat. So if you start them slow on new stuff to give them time to develop a good crop of bacteria then they'll be fine.

I got my first goats at 10 weeks. They ate lots of grass and weeds and leaves.


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## IceDog (Aug 1, 2010)

I've carefully (avoiding the situations that make grass clippings dangerous to feed) fed grass clippings to my horses for many, many years.

However my goats had zero interest in eating grass clippings. They'd dry in their feeder, and over a week or so, accidently eat most of them while eating their hay.

They all completely turned their noses up at grass clippings....until yesterday!

Yesterday I bought an old fashioned reel mower with a grass catcher.

The mower worked good enough but the clippings didn't really end up in the catcher. So I only had a small amount of clippings in the catcher with great manual effort to get them there. I figured no point giving the tiny amount to the horses so decided to put them in the doe pen to dry and accidently be consumed along with their hay over the next week or so....wrong!

They immediately ate them with great gusto!

Then only difference I can see is the reel mower made a clean cut of the grass where as the gas mower tears up the grass clippings more before they end up in the catcher.

Happy goats!

And since the reel mower was a disappoint in the grass catcher area the fact that the goats will eat clippings from it will keep me using it... so hubby is wrong! It's not going to be a yard ornament!

:lol:


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## Bob Jones (Aug 21, 2009)

I actually bought a scythe to cut my grass and weeds with. They had no interest when the lawn mower was used. 

I use it to trim the weeping willow as well, which is another tasty treat for them.


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## Nanno (Aug 30, 2009)

My goat usually likes grass clippings no matter how they're cut. But my generous neighbor always brought way too many for him to finish.


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## IceDog (Aug 1, 2010)

> But my generous neighbor always brought way too many for him to finish.


And that is when it can become dangerous, at least for horses. Grass clippings that sit in a pile start to ferment/rot and can cause problems for horses. Not sure about goats.


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## Bob Jones (Aug 21, 2009)

I've never seen them eat anything rotting. They turn their lips up at pickles. And they eat around moldy hay leaving stuff they don't want. They won't touch a rotting apple, but will eat them when they have dried on the ground. I am sure they wouldn't even touch it if it was fermenting. 

All of which I thought odd given the reputation that goats would eat anything.

I have been tempted to start some silage from time to time, but haven't because of their finicky eating habits.


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## Nanno (Aug 30, 2009)

Yeah, I would never let the horses eat very many grass clippings. Even if they didn't get to the fermenting stage, such green grass can cause founder, so I never let them have more than a little as a treat. Cuzco, on the other hand, is not subject to founder and he would never eat more than was ok for him. Once the pile started to ferment I'd scatter it.


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## ryorkies (May 4, 2010)

If you scatter it as soon as it is cut. And let it dry.
Would that not be called hay? 
Then it would not ferment/mold.


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