# Pasturing Sheep with Goats?



## myrtlelane (May 12, 2006)

Can anyone tell me if you can sucessfully pasture Katahdin sheep with goats, and more so the ram sheep with the buck goats? Please E-Mail me at [email protected] sure would appreciate your input on this one.


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## backachersfarm (Jun 14, 2005)

We have run sheep and goats together. The only problem we seem to have is that if the goats have horns they can be more aggressive toward the sheep at feeding time. If it was a time of yr where there is no feed involved things were ok. The rams and billies did fine too as long as it was not hay feeding season. If we had to put hay out for them the goats climb all over it and pee on it. The rams wouldn't eat it.


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## The_Shepherdess (Dec 5, 2005)

We ran sheep with goats. Worked fine. The boys tended to spar a bit, but they didn't kill each other, and anyway the billy always won. That ram had no sense of tactics...*sigh*
Anyway. What Backachers said.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

goats need much higher copper levels than sheep do - so you'd have to provide them all with high quality sheep minerals, and additionally bolus the goats regularly with copper.


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## Catbird (Oct 14, 2004)

We run sheep with the goats but goats seem to be a little bossy so they each have their own shelters .


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

I know a guy who swears that if you run sheep and goats together, the rams will impregnate the does and you will get a cross that is likely to either kill the mother giving birth or the baby will die soon after its born. I looked into it and can find no evidence for this, but he SWEARS he's seen it happen with his own animals. Just throwing it out there...


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## backachersfarm (Jun 14, 2005)

Madness is right about goats and sheep breeding each other. I didn't think of it when I posted earlier because we never run the rams and billies with the females unless it is breeding season. It won't kill the females, but they have high rates of miscarry and some oddball babies...called shoats and geeps. I can't remember which mix is which...lol


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## lejdixie101 (Feb 11, 2008)

myrtlelane said:


> Can anyone tell me if you can sucessfully pasture Katahdin sheep with goats, and more so the ram sheep with the buck goats? Please E-Mail me at [email protected] sure would appreciate your input on this one.


i have sheep an goats togather an they do fine


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## downtheginroad (Mar 20, 2008)

A shoat is actually a young pig but I've heard it used to refer to geeps. There's also a thing called a chimera which is a fusion of sheep and goat embryos, but that requires a PhD and a lab coat and my guys possess neither.

Up until last year I ran goats with my sheep with no problems. The whole geep thing was a nonissue for me for the 7 years they ran together. It's possible, but the odds are extremely high that the doe will stick, and even higher that she will carry it to term. A quick Google on "geep" only brought back a tiny handful, and I've only seen 1 in my life. The problem I ran into was my rams had MUCH higher libidos than the bucks, and they would prevent the bucks from getting anything bred. Probably had more to do with the Mouflon in my rams than the fact that they were sheep though. Katahdins aren't so nutty.


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## Olivia67 (Mar 6, 2008)

We have our Old English Southdowns running with our Nigerian Dwarf goats and our mini horse is in there too and so far everyone gets along. We seperate during breeding time because we do have an angora goat and if the ram gets her she'll miscarry and we don't want to lose a season on her. Our rams have little legs so they can't get up much speed to hurt the bucks and everyone is dehorned/polled. We feed the goats sweet feed with copper rods in it a few times a year and try to get them to eat some loose mineral a few times a week and keep all the high copper stuff away from the sheep. That's been the biggest pain in the butt about the whole thing.


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## sssapps (Apr 1, 2008)

We ran our goats and American Barbados sheep together...well, they did fine together, except the rams (with their curled horns) could be rather agressive to our goats - who were de-horned. In fact, we have no kids coming this spring because our last ram 'took control' of the herd and wouldn't let our buck breed our doe. Otherwise, they were fine. Now we have gotten rid of the sheep though...hopefully we'll have a kid next year!


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