What farm animals are okay to keep together?
Question by Mag: What farm animals are okay to keep together?
If they have an enormous feild and separate yards for feeding and giving birth, etc. And I am talking ALL farm animals. And if all the males are kept in their own pens separate. Thanks! (ex: cows, goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys, guinea hens, rabbits (moved around in a cage), llama, alpaca, etc.)
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3 Responses to What farm animals are okay to keep together?
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Chickens, turkeys and guinea hens all get along together, rabbits will be fine as long as they are in a cage. The Llama and alpaca’s get along well with goats and sheep and goats and sheep get along together. I just do not know about the cows… It should be fine but for safety I would test them first
♠♫ Black Shadow ♠♫
March 31, 2013 at 5:41 pm
The beauty of farming is that all animals you mentioned can be raised together. For example Goats are browsers , sheeps are grazers they can working in same pasture while dogs / donkeys / alpaca can guard them
Farming Geek
March 31, 2013 at 6:34 pm
Some people won’t keep sheep and goats together for fear of scrapie, but if your sheep are clean, then I doubt that should be a problem. We keep our male goats in with the male and female sheep (they run together.) That makes getting the sheep up easier, because the friendly goats will ALWAYS come to feed, and the sheep follow them. Of course you know that the sheep’s feed can’t contain the same amount of copper that goats’ feed can, nor should these animals eat any high-calcium chicken-layer pellets or high-molasses feed. This is especially true for male goats. They get kidney stones easily and their bladders can burst and they die if not given immediate treatment and sometimes surgery.
Don’t let any of the large animals jump on your rabbit cages. Goats will stand on anything.
Goat are natural browsers, but they will also graze with your sheep. If you have lots of oak trees in your field, be SURE the goats have adequate other feed/grass/hay. If the goats have to start eating too much oak bark, acorns and leaves, this can kill them. Our friends lost a good part of their herd this way. Also be wary of some ferns; they can cause Vit. B1 deficiency in goats; the goats will start acting paralyzed, or as if they have tetanus, or as if they were blind. This can be treated if caught in time.
Watch the chickens and poultry pooping in the feeders and water troughs. They can easily contaminate the water. I’ve heard some people blame goats’ coccidiosis on the presence of chickens in the pen and pooping in the water, but some goats will get cocci anyway.
Keep everyone de-wormed.
If you have white-tailed deer in your area, be sure your llama and alpaca are on a preventative wormer that will deal with the parasites carried by the deer. Once the llama and alpaca get these parasites, the parasites go to the brain and at that point, deworming the camelids can kill them.
Yes, the males need to be separate; your ram may get especially aggressive during breeding season and may hurt your other animals or you.
And, yes, be sure your animals kid, foal, lamb, etc. in a pen AWAY from the guard animals (male donkeys are the worst). The guard animal may not understand that that little yelling thing is a new herd-member, and may kill it.
I hope this helps.
angelharp7
March 31, 2013 at 7:13 pm