Can Goats And Chickens Share Same Housing ?

[Nyboy]

In the movies chickens are free in barn with other livestock. Can they share housing with goats ? Do they always need their own coop ?

 

[Ridgerunner]

How to answer. For thousands of years small farms have kept chickens where they totally free range. The chickens may have a coop where they are locked up at night but they are expected to find their won food in good weather months. They might go out and forage in the fields, they might eat a goat's or horse's feed. They pretty much have total freedom of movement. Goats and other large mammals are typically fenced in. They have no problems sharing room with chickens.

If you lock them all together in a very tight space you might have some issues, not so much them trying to hurt each other but just issues from being crowded. But in general the larger mammals are not going to try to harm the chickens, the chickens will love scratching in their poop for partially digested treats.

If you are keeping chickens in suburbia that just doesn't work. But on a farm, yeah that's a pretty common model.

 

[Beekissed]

Just remember...the goats will eat all your chicken feed if they are housed together, so that will have to be worked out.

 

[Ridgerunner]

In the small farm model goats cannot get to chicken feed but chickens can get to goat feed.

 

[Beekissed]

In the small farm model goats cannot get to chicken feed but chickens can get to goat feed.

Ideally, that is the case, but when housing them together there would have to be some separation established where the goats cannot access the chicken feed. I had hair sheep and any given time the coop door was left open for any reason~even briefly, they were ducking in there and licking up chicken feed before I could shoo them out. Goats are even worse.

 

[thistlebloom]

And the chickens will poo in the goat feed.

 

[ducks4you]

ALL of my animals think that ALL of the other animals food is exotic and worth eating.

 

[thistlebloom]

ALL of my animals think that ALL of the other animals food is exotic and worth eating.

Isn't that the truth. I have my mini mule separated into his own "diet cell" and in the afternoon when I let him join the horse for a few hours they swap corrals and gobble up any crumbs the other left, even though it's the same hay.

 

[ninnymary]

When we were in Bali last year chickens were walking all over in neighborhoods. Other animals in the outskirts were penned very rustically with branches and there were gaps enough for the chickens to get in and they did. Of course there was no feed troughs per say for the other animals. They grazed on whatever grew on the ground. We've seen the same thing in rural parts of Mexico.

Mary

 

[baymule]

Crowd them up together and the chickens will roost over the animals and poop on them.