Will Goats Eat My Trees? What They Leave Alone and What They Do Not

The short answer is that goats will eat the leaves they can reach on almost any tree, and they will strip the bark off some. Whether that matters depends on the age and kind of tree. A fifty-year-old oak with deep furrowed bark will shrug off a herd. A three-year-old fruit tree will not.

What goats actually do to trees

There are two kinds of damage. The first is browsing: eating leaves, twigs and low branches. Goats will stand on their hind legs and reach a good deal higher than you would guess, so a mature tree ends up with a neat, level underside where the herd could reach. That is cosmetic. The tree grows new leaves.

The second is bark damage, and it is the one that kills trees. If a goat strips the bark all the way around a trunk, a so-called girdle, the tree cannot move water and sugars up and down and it usually dies. Bark that is only chewed on one side is often survivable. Thin, smooth bark on young trees is the most at risk, because it is the easiest to peel and the trunk is narrow enough to ring completely.

Which trees are generally fine

• Mature trees with thick, rough bark. Large oaks, eucalyptus and old pines are not going to be girdled by a herd passing through.
• Trees that are simply out of reach. Canopy above head height is untouched.

Which trees need protecting

• Young trees of any kind, especially anything planted in the last few years.
• Fruit and nut trees, which are often thin-barked and which goats like.
• Ornamental trees with smooth bark, such as young maples.
• Oak seedlings and saplings you want to keep. Goats do not know the difference between a sapling you planted and a seedling you did not.

How the herder protects them

This is part of the site walk. The herder asks you to point out any tree you want to keep, and anything valuable gets fenced out of the grazing area. For one or two trees inside a larger area, that can mean a small ring of the same temporary netting used for the rest of the job. For a young orchard, the whole block is usually left out.

Wire tree guards, the cylinders of welded wire you see around young trees, also work and can stay in place after the herd leaves. If you have a row of young trees, you can put those up yourself before the herd arrives.

What we cannot promise

A goat that is hungry and short of other food will test things it would normally ignore. That is one reason a herder is on site, and one reason herd size is matched to the amount of vegetation. If you have trees you would be heartbroken to lose, tell us up front. We would rather fence a tree off than apologize afterward.

See also: how to prepare your property and will goats eat my landscaping?