# Chickens,goats,and horses living together?



## Beckngoats

Here's a question for you, can all three species live in the same small barn together? We have two whethers,two miniature horses. We are considering some Guinea Fowl next year. Would living in the same building,but separate stalls,or cage, cause any health problems?


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## Retiredokjusttired

Yes they can. Keep all food separate...that is the biggest challenge. Bird feed can be fatal to goats. If the bird feed is meat based it WILL harm your goats. I feed a soy based and it would eventually cause problems but probably not as fast.
I had a mini getting into the coop and tried everything to keep him out. I eventually found a design that made "crick"/crooked/turn into the entry hole to my coop that kept him out.

My coop is a house that has a picked fence around the doorway with a picked fence gait. My husband cut out the bottoms of 2 slats so the chickens could go in and out. The mini could fit through it. I took 2 cinder blocks put one on each side so he had to turn to get through it. He couldn't, he was to big but the chickens could. Problem solved.
If you end up with issues to deal with like this...pintrest has a lot of ideas.


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## ShireRidgeFarm

I agree about the food - that can be very tricky to keep apart sometimes, but needs to be done. 

Goats and chickens/other poultry should get along fine. I've personally had goats with chickens and turkeys. The birds actually start identifying the goats as a part of their flock and will follow them around.  I swear our turkeys thought they were goats - they never roosted and always slept on the ground. The goats really couldn't care less about the chickens or turkeys. 

As for the horses, it's going to depend on their personality. I've kind of had a bad experience in that area - we rescued a donkey and turns out he hates any other species of animal and will kill them if he gets the chance. :/ Just take it slow and be prepared to separate the horses if you have to.


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## goatblessings

Also note that some types of goat feed are medicated. Do NOT let your horses eat that - it can be fatal. Agree on personality. Depends on the horse. Had one that hated the goats and would try to get hold of them and fling them off the ground or stomp them.


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## Lstein

I would personally keep the poultry housed separate if at all possible, simply to avoid the whole feed issue. If you let them free range, they will more than likely go in with the other animals to scratch around anyway. Plus if you have guineas, they for sure will go wherever they want unless you have a covered area.

Also definitely take it slow with the ponies, as Lauren pointed out, they can have attitudes (not saying all do, but those little guys get away with a lot more than a big horse can .... simply because it looks cute when they do it)


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## dreamacresfarm2

I have goats, chickens, horses, alpacas, and geese in the same field but the they have separate sleeping areas


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## Beckngoats

Thank you for all of the great replies! I hadn't thought about the goats getting into the poultry feed. Excellent tip! We do keep our goat feed at the other end of our barn. The mini horses can't get to it. I think it would definitely be better to keep the Guineas in separate housing. I have seen sheep and Guineas roaming together. I think our goats would get used to them,horses might be another story. So,keeping them in a coop,with plenty of outdoor time,might be best. Thanks again!


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## catharina

Yes, the chicken food could kill the goats or horses, but they LOVE it & will do their very best to get to it. It also can cause founder.

My hens & goats get along OK, even the buck. The kids actually seem to enjoy the hens' presence. Sometimes the goats push the hens away if they try to get the goats' food, but they don't hurt them. The goats don't seem to mind the hens laying eggs in their hay though!

I like that the hens try to eat all the food the goats spill--less for the rats!

Donkeys are well known to kill goats, but they're different than horses or ponies. You can provide dog houses for the goats to get away in, or things for them to climb on that the horses can't.


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## odieclark

Yikes, I wouldn't of ever thought of any of this! Yikes!

Guess it's good we don't have any horses, ponies, donkeys, or those wild Guineas birds! 

The main issue the farm had with separating was the goats just HAD to get in by the lambs! I think the goats just had to find out if the lambs had something special that they didn't have! :wave:

I must say, the lambs and goats seem very friendly and curious about one another! They kiss through the fence!:wave::drool::lol::drool:

Since the cross over the fence has been reinforced and later this summer the configuration will change.

opcorn:


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## packhillboers

Well here I go again talking about poop problems in the barn yard, but its something to think about when you mix different animals all together. If you have a larger area for these animals to all mingle together, I don't think it will be a problem but if they are staying in the same barn area, well, you are going to have a time with poop problems. Any animal that is not a vegetarian and is mixed with grass eating animals will carry poop problems for your goats and sheep. Never good to mix these animals in tight feeding operations. Unless you can keep a clean eating environment, I would be careful about mixing all these animals together. I don't even let my dog poop in the goat field. However.. there's a fox that has done this and I go and shovel it out of their grass pen as fox poop it carries tape worms. I think our outside cat is still running to the garage to poop in the liter box which I'm totally happy about. She had at one time made it a habit to poop in the barn on the hay. I can not say it enough... POOP is a problem on any farm for any species. Keep it clean.


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## catharina

Cats tend to get tapeworm a lot because they bite & swallow fleas while grooming & fleas are a vector (?) for tapeworm eggs. My vet also says all animals get the same kind of tapeworm, known as the Cat Tapeworm. So barn cats need good flea protection & attention to worming.

If the chickens eat vegetarian food is that better? The organic one I buy happens to be vegetarian.


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## goathiker

It won't matter, the chickens are still going to chase down and eat bugs and small rodents. If you need rodent control, get turkeys, they eat rats :lol:

Chicken poop carries an enzyme that can make your ponies starve to death if they get it in their gut. It is never good to house chickens with horses. No matter what you do poop dust is going to get into the air to settle on everything.


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## catharina

goathiker said:


> If you need rodent control, get turkeys, they eat rats :lol:


Really???? We have an impossible rat problem! I read somewhere that chickens & turkeys can't live together--some kind of germ maybe? I have no room for separate housing. Do you need a heirloom turkey or something? The regular "butterball" kind get crippled & don't live long--their bodies are too heavy. (I knew someone who got some white ones, thinking she'd eat them. She ended up not doing so, and the poor things could hardly do more than stagger a few feet to the feed or water. They just laid down all the time.)

So how many turkeys would I need minimum & what kind?

PS I've never seen my hens eat small rodents.


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## odieclark

*Hens turkeys and rodents*



catharina said:


> Really???? We have an impossible rat problem! I read somewhere that chickens & turkeys can't live together--some kind of germ maybe? I have no room for separate housing. Do you need a heirloom turkey or something? The regular "butterball" kind get crippled & don't live long--their bodies are too heavy. (I knew someone who got some white ones, thinking she'd eat them. She ended up not doing so, and the poor things could hardly do more than stagger a few feet to the feed or water. They just laid down all the time.)
> 
> So how many turkeys would I need minimum & what kind?
> 
> PS I've never seen my hens eat small rodents.


Wow, turkeys? I didn't know that! We had 5 beautiful turkeys once, a few years ago, and they were gorgeous! I can't tell you what kind they were and know on some old hard drive I have some great pics of them...though have no clue where the pics are?! However, these turkeys were smart, mobile, and not the meat variety that loses the use of their legs!

I have seen our hens off and running with a mouse in mouth, with several others running behind and trying to steal the treat!. The usual hen behavior! Also, once with a small snake in mouth! I was impressed!

I don't think the hens are great at the snake or rodent control, but I have been a witness to the two events!

Our turkeys and hens have never been nearby to our other animals, as we have varying locations for them


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## ksalvagno

Blackhead is the disease that can be passed from chickens to turkeys. It seems to only be in certain parts of the country. Supposedly in Ohio you shouldn't mix the 2 because of it.


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## odieclark

*Turkeys laying hens blackhead*



ksalvagno said:


> Blackhead is the disease that can be passed from chickens to turkeys. It seems to only be in certain parts of the country. Supposedly in Ohio you shouldn't mix the 2 because of it.


I didn't know specifically about this disease! Oh my,!!!

So, I read this, from a hatchery!

http://www.millerhatcheries.com/information/diseases/blackhead_disease.htm


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## Greybird

It's true about blackhead disease. Chickens can carry it without harm, but turkeys will get sick and die from it. However, if your area doesn't have it then it's actually beneficial to raise them together. When chickens are raised with turkeys they are naturally vaccinated against Marek's disease, and that's a bad one for chickens.
It all depends on where you live.

I've always had poultry, but I'm still pretty new to goats. Up until recently, I kept them in separately fenced areas, but my "odd couple" geese produced a batch of hybrid babies this year. They ate every single blade of grass and every weed in the poultry area, and so I finally gave in and turned them loose in the goat's pasture. ('Just hoping that the local, duck-eating eagles wouldn't get them!) The goats eat the brush and the taller weeds, but the geese prefer to eat closer to the ground, so they don't seem to be competing with each other very much, food-wise.

Behaviorally, they have been interesting. At first, both groups seemed to be somewhat afraid of each other, but now they usually stay loosely together. I don't know if they are protecting each other or not, but absolutely NOTHING can sneak up on those geese, while the goats have no fear of smaller predators like cats, raccoons, etc. (The fence stops larger animals.)

I'm still watching and learning, but both the geese and the goats do seem to feel safer when they stay near each other, and if the goats get into one of their crazy "run around the field" moods then the geese will almost take flight just to keep up with them. 
I never expected this result. I don't know if my chickens and turkeys would also act like this, or if geese are naturally more attuned to living in extended flocks or herds.


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## odieclark

Greybird said:


> It's true about blackhead disease. Chickens can carry it without harm, but turkeys will get sick and die from it. However, if your area doesn't have it then it's actually beneficial to raise them together. When chickens are raised with turkeys they are naturally vaccinated against Marek's disease, and that's a bad one for chickens.
> It all depends on where you live.
> 
> I've always had poultry, but I'm still pretty new to goats. Up until recently, I kept them in separately fenced areas, but my "odd couple" geese produced a batch of hybrid babies this year. They ate every single blade of grass and every weed in the poultry area, and so I finally gave in and turned them loose in the goat's pasture. ('Just hoping that the local, duck-eating eagles wouldn't get them!) The goats eat the brush and the taller weeds, but the geese prefer to eat closer to the ground, so they don't seem to be competing with each other very much, food-wise.
> 
> Behaviorally, they have been interesting. At first, both groups seemed to be somewhat afraid of each other, but now they usually stay loosely together. I don't know if they are protecting each other or not, but absolutely NOTHING can sneak up on those geese, while the goats have no fear of smaller predators like cats, raccoons, etc. (The fence stops larger animals.)
> 
> I'm still watching and learning, but both the geese and the goats do seem to feel safer when they stay near each other, and if the
> 
> goats get into one of their crazy "run around the field" moods then the geese will almost take flight just to keep up with them.
> I never expected this result. I don't know if my chickens and turkeys would also act like this, or if geese are naturally more attuned to living in extended flocks or herds.


This is fascinating! How interesting!

I didn't know that about the Mareks, gee that is good!


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## catharina

Greybird said:


> It's true about blackhead disease. Chickens can carry it without harm, but turkeys will get sick and die from it. However, if your area doesn't have it then it's actually beneficial to raise them together. When chickens are raised with turkeys they are naturally vaccinated against Marek's disease, and that's a bad one for chickens.
> It all depends on where you live.
> 
> I've always had poultry, but I'm still pretty new to goats. Up until recently, I kept them in separately fenced areas, but my "odd couple" geese produced a batch of hybrid babies this year. They ate every single blade of grass and every weed in the poultry area, and so I finally gave in and turned them loose in the goat's pasture. ('Just hoping that the local, duck-eating eagles wouldn't get them!) The goats eat the brush and the taller weeds, but the geese prefer to eat closer to the ground, so they don't seem to be competing with each other very much, food-wise.
> 
> Behaviorally, they have been interesting. At first, both groups seemed to be somewhat afraid of each other, but now they usually stay loosely together. I don't know if they are protecting each other or not, but absolutely NOTHING can sneak up on those geese, while the goats have no fear of smaller predators like cats, raccoons, etc. (The fence stops larger animals.)
> 
> I'm still watching and learning, but both the geese and the goats do seem to feel safer when they stay near each other, and if the goats get into one of their crazy "run around the field" moods then the geese will almost take flight just to keep up with them.
> I never expected this result. I don't know if my chickens and turkeys would also act like this, or if geese are naturally more attuned to living in extended flocks or herds.


That is one of the most interesting posts I've read here! :: Mareks has been a problem off & on around here, & the vet said the vaccine has a fairly high failure rate. It's so sad when a chicken gets it. Does anyone know if blackhead is present an hour or so north of San Francisco? We do have wild turkeys in the area, but they don't come on to my property. All my hens were commercially hatched chicks from the feed store. I love to admire the amazing wild turkeys here, especially when the males are displaying, but they are starting to be considered pests here. Fish & Game introduced them--the Rio Grande type. Boy those birds are smart--ever notice you almost never see one as road kill? Unlike owls & raccoons, who are supposed to be pretty smart too!

Why did the chicken cross the road? :chick: To show the possum it could be done! Sorry-that's a tired old one. :ZZZ: The first time I heard it I laughed so hard I almost fell off my dinosaur.


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## ShireRidgeFarm

We raised turkeys successfully last year. Not with the chickens, but in the field directly next to the chickens where chickens have been in the past. I walked back and forth between the two fields, too, so I'm not sure how 'separate' they really were. Absolutely no issues.

We're raising turkeys again this year, and we also just raised up a new flock of chickens, so the separation of the two species has been even less this year. We haven't lost a single turkey! But, I have heard stories from others in my area who have had a disastrous experience raising turkeys. I get the impression it's up to you to keep your flocks clean and disease free, not necessarily that a whole geographical area is contaminated with blackhead. But, we also are fortunate not have any other farms nearby to mingle with ours.

...our turkeys were about the dumbest, ugliest little critters I've ever seen.  We built a feeder for them, a teir-type thing that they could climb to the top and eat from so the goats couldn't get into the food. The turkeys never could figure out how to climb it! As soon as the food was above their heads they started looking around like, "Where'd it go?" I think the wild ones must have more sense - ours would _never _have made it on their own!


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## odieclark

Interesting on the dumb turkeys! Gosh, I can't imagine them not finding the food!

I don't know what the turkeys were that we had, but they were hard to keep contained. Friendly, healthy, loved to be outside!

Wild turkeys use to come in by our old house and mingle with our hens. That always concerned me, but we were lucky in not having any issues or diseases spread at those times.

We did have Mareks in some hens I bought from a craiglist seller.. Mareks is an awful killer of the hens! Now, I have ordered the new ones with the vaccination. I sure hope it works! Gosh, the failure rate sounds high, I am concerned...


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## Beckngoats

This turned out to be full of great info! Thanks for all of the replies. 

As for my original question,we have decided to NOT house the Guinea Fowl with the goats and horses. We're going to build a coop.


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## jaimn

my :2cents: haha

Every time I had a sick goat the first thing my goat go-to friend said was "DID IT EAT CHICKEN FEED?????" 

We have had chickens, ducks, and geese in our goat yard. I bought some pretty Sussex chickens that we would put on the goats' backs as chicks, and rode up their until we moved them into their own yard. Everyone seemed to love it, goats too. Plus the Sussex colors matched the Oberhasli, haha.

We've hatched several batches of chicks and ducks in the goat yard, and one main problem we had was goats stepping on the birds and breaking legs, backs, etc.. The geese are just indignant at everything, but the funny thing they did was bite the goats' necks, like "hey you, listen to me!". They never hurt the goats, and the goats actually stood there like "a little to the side, yeaaa". Poor duckling had to have a popsicle splint on her leg for weeks after a bad break, such a sorry sight to see. If you want to feel like a Really Bad Person, go put a splint on a lil' fuzzy ducky and watch her try to walk. She just would not understand when I said it was for her own good, but she's raising her own flock now, so it must have worked. 

We finally built a yard just for the ducks and geese, and besides not worrying about feed was how quiet the yard got - the geese were finally "alone". Shoulda done that long ago!

There are still some roosters in the goat yard, but I appreciate how they keep it clean from bugs. Some naughty hens jumped the fence and are in there too - they are more trouble as they lay egg nests, usually in the feeding area where the goats *could* step on the eggs, so hopefully we get them collected before they can smell bad. I did find some in the milking room though, oops.  Oh, and then there is the chicken droppings that you find later, after you've leaned over the feed stall to toss hay, and find some on your shirt, or that wetness on your hand... 

I had read about dog poop carrying things not good for goats, and while they are not allowed in the goat yard for that reason the goats do sometimes graze where the dogs go, though we try to keep it cleaned up (those Great Dane piles aren't hard to miss!!).

Two funniest things I've ever seen with my chickens - first, the red laser light.... I'm getting the giggles just thinking about running that light around their coop in the dark, watching the girls either peck at each other or flip out like it's going to get them, while the rooster looks on, confused.... probably just dumb country fun but oh what fun it is!

The second was feeding my chickens a snake the dogs' killed.... one hen would pick it up and run with it, stepping on it's tail with her foot and causing her to almost somersault, then another hen would pick it up and repeat, all the while the whole coop is chasing to get a bite.... good times in the country! There's a song in there somewhere....  Forget Pokémon, I might go find the snake in the tomatoes and have some fun tomorrow!

I have also fed my chickens mice and moles, but a rat would be too big. I'd be afraid for the chicken!

My friend operated a Grade A goat milk facility, and said no birds were allowed around feed/hay/etc and milking equipment. She does have barn cats though. 

I don't know anything about the horses. I have appreciated this thread though - as usual, it is super helpful and always something to learn. :book:


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## Lstein

Finding that stash of eggs is the worst. Knowing that it could potentially be a land mine. Then comes trying to defuse it, knowing that at any second it could blow......*shudder*. :gift:

I was having the worst trouble with the hens going into the barn and laying them in the straw in some corner (that of course get covered by a goat and you accidently step on it), buckets of feed, even on my table. Now they get locked up until after work on weekdays and noon on weekends. "RELEASE THE BIRDZ!"...as a wall of feathers barrels out the gate.

Darn hens, they are already a big enough money drain but then go and hide the little bit of their "expense reduction" :angry:


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## Karen

ShireRidgeFarm said:


> ...our turkeys were about the dumbest, ugliest little critters I've ever seen.  We built a feeder for them, a teir-type thing that they could climb to the top and eat from so the goats couldn't get into the food. The turkeys never could figure out how to climb it! As soon as the food was above their heads they started looking around like, "Where'd it go?" I think the wild ones must have more sense - ours would _never _have made it on their own!


Yeah, unfortunately some domesticated turkeys have had all the smarts bred right out of 'em! What breed were these?


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## ShireRidgeFarm

Karen said:


> Yeah, unfortunately some domesticated turkeys have had all the smarts bred right out of 'em! What breed were these?


 They were broad-breasted whites and broad-breasted bronze we got from Rural King. We have some more turkeys this year, the white and bronze as well as some heritage breeds, Blue Slate and Royal Palm. This time we ordered them from Murray McMurray hatchery. These birds seem a bit smarter - they figured out how to roost on something, anyway!  But they are terrified of our Polish tophat chicken, even though she's a third of their size. :roll:


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