We are planning on putting up a woven wire fence (close to an acre)for our goats. Can we/should we, put any other livestock in it... pigs, chickens, turkeys, or even a cow for meat (no sheep). We are not talking a lot of animals, just enough for a very large family to eat. We are not expecting the pasture to support any of the animals (we will be giving them feed), we just wanted to know if they will be happy (?) together, have any disease problems, etc. Your thoughts are welcome. Gertie

-- Gertie (hirefams@mhtc.net), March 23, 2002

Answers

Chickens work well with any of the others, but I would not keep pigs with cows as they will damage the cow. Don't know about goats and pigs. Goats and cows are ok.

-- kim in CO (kimk61252@hotmail.com), March 23, 2002.

Goats and pigs are a bad combination.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), March 23, 2002.

By the way- no offense, but woven wire is not always effective with goats. They have a habit of standing with their front feet on it, and as time goes by the fence begins to lean and sag, at which opint they break through it. Reinforcing the wire with wood, top and bottom, runninng from post to post, will help a lot. The wire should also be the sort that has holes that are too small for a kid goat to squeeze through. I say all this because woven wire is expensive, and a big hassle to put up again after it has been mashed to the ground and bent up. Stock panels are also very effective, they cost a little but are worth it. Also, the stock panels can be added to as more can be afforded, or the pen can be dismantled and moved very easily, because they are rigid and come in panels.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), March 23, 2002.

Pig will eat chickens.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), March 23, 2002.

Pigs will dig under woven wire, lift it up and get out. Pigs will also eat your chickens, turkeys...or anything else they think they can or get their mouth around. Have even seen a pig go after a full grown horse, and caused some serious damage to the horse before the owner got the shot gun and killed the pig.

-- Bergere (autumnhaus@aol.com), March 23, 2002.

It's true -- pigs do not play well with others. Our chickens do sometimes get in with the pigs to pick at their pasture, and we haven't lost any there yet. But we figure, if we lose an occasional chicken to a pig, that's okay - just a little extra protein for the piggies, and we have PLENTY of chickens. I sure wouldn't put any other kind of animal in with pigs though.

-- Cheryl in KS (cherylmccoy@rocketmail.com), March 23, 2002.

The goats will destroy the woven wire as mentioned above. You might consider what we do. Run one electric wire about halfway up the fence. The goats won't stand on it then. A pig would require an electric wire a few inches from the bottom.

-- Dianne Wood (woodgoat@pacifier.com), March 23, 2002.

Pigs belong in a pigpen, with a good wallow, other pigs and nothing else. Welded cow panel fence buried a foot or more in the ground will help keep them in, with lots of staples and close posting.

As a general rule, just consider that pigs and hogs can destroy pretty much anything they set their mind to.

-- Hank in Oklahoma (hbaker@ipa.net), March 23, 2002.

There's an interesting article in the latest Mother Earth News about pastured beef,poultry, goats & pigs. Not the 'chicken tractor type' pasturing but real 'let them graze' like in the olden days pasturing. It might be useful for the type of setup your looking for. We have had a commercial dairy in the past, both goats & Jerseys. Once we got out of milking commercially we decided to try raising all the animals together. The goat kids loved to jump on the cattles' backs & would sometimes run under a cow as shelter against a sudden spring shower.:) It was funny to watch & made for some interesting pictures. We had three acres in pasture and it was fenced with just the welded wire fence.No hot wire,just the 5 ft welded wire. In 18 years we never had a goat or cow get out or bust down the fences by stepping on them. One thing we did was put a few of those large electric company spools out in the pasture away from the fence line for the goats to play on, maybe they found them more amusing than trying to get over the fence or we could have just been very lucky but we are now turning a 5 strand barb wired pasture into a goat pasture & we're using the same method, 5ft welded only. Let's hope it wasn't just luck for all those years!! We let the chickens,turkeys,geese & ducks go into the same pasture with the hoof stock, the main thing is to make sure there's enough space for everything so it doesn't get overly dirty with droppings. We raised our pigs in a 'pig panel' 32ft X 48ft enclosure next to the rest of the animals & put rebar every foot or so 12in into the ground so they couldn't just burrow under. Surprisingly, they seemed content in the pen and never tried to get out, we had read if you put a bowling ball in with pigs, they will keep active pushing it around so for $2.00 at a Good Will we bought a pig bowling ball, if that's why they seemed content I'll never know but I'll try anything that makes sense. After reading the Mother Earth article we are contemplating trying to run the pigs with every body else. Of course alot would depend on the type & size of your pasture & the amount of animals you want to pasture. Let us know how it's going & good luck. Peace, Kathy

-- Kathy Aldridge (beckoningwinds@lycos.com), March 23, 2002.

You might want to try electrified high tensile instead of woven wire. Goats are hard on fencing, and if they can put their feet on it, they'll tear it up in no time. Mine still looks like new with 4 years of hard usage, and was much cheaper than woven wire, even with the charger added in. (solar charger)

As far as who makes a happy family? I've never had any problems with any of the birds, and graze my turkeys and geese in the goat pasture every summer. The turkeys use a moveable roost shed at night, with just a roof, and poles to roost on. Cows will depend on the individual, it usually works, but if you get a 'difficult' personality, the cow can be hard on the smaller critters. Pigs can be aggressive, and should be housed alone. They can do quite a bit of damage to even a cow, if they decide they want to. They'll also 'plow' your field for you, ruining the grazing for everyone else.

This is also going to depend on grazing conditions. In a dry summer, an acre isn't going to keep a cow fed, and you'll have to suppliment with hay.

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), March 24, 2002.

Add equine and I've done it! But mine have a lot of pasture acreage ~ no pens, no stalls. You run into a lot of problems in confinement situations. In fact, confinement causes a LOT of problems, including sickness.

Pigs eat chooks? My chooks nap on top of the swine. The bovine love the swine. Evidently your milege varies! -G-

One acre of pasture will not support what you want. Pastures have to be alternated in order to keep growing. You can't keep the critters constantly in one area or you will have a dry lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, someone, but I believe it should be one acre per cow for the land to sustain them.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), March 24, 2002.

I have often wondered this myself. We have a fenced area that our chickens free range in. I would like to put another animal in there to keep the grass down so we don't have to mow it. I don't want goats because I don't want to worry about keeping them getting out. Unless pygmy goats would work. A couple of sheep might work but I am clueless keeping anything other than the chickens.

What about borrowing a neighbor's sheep? Would there be potential disease problems with this? We have a neighbor that buys up really scruffy looking animals and puts them on an overgrazed field. He sells to ethnic people from DC that want fresh butchered animals. I think they are usually muslims either that or just people from other countries used to getting their meat this way. Would it be a good idea or not to see if he'd like to fatten up a couple sheep on my little field? (At different times, this neighbor has also had: waterbuffalo, emu, ostrich, pigs, bison or beefalo, brahman cattle, long horns, lots of varieties of sheep and goats, and 2 or 3 wandering flocks of chickens.

-- Lav, Maryland (lavenderbluedilly@hotmail.com), March 24, 2002.

Rogo, pigs eat ANYTHING. They just have to be hungry enough, and wake up to the fact that they can. For most people, it's generally just better to make sure they never get the opportunity to learn some of the things they could eat. Pigs are "opportunistic omnivores" (like people). They'll eat anything that doesn't eat them first, but they've got better teeth than people have. It really isn't pretty to see what feral pigs do to a flock of lambing ewes. Either you don't keep an inventory on your poultry, or you keep your pigs stuffed to the gills all day every day, and entertained as well.

As to an acre a cow - local rules, I'm sure. If you tried to run ten cows on ten acres on a lot of western lands (USA or Australian) and the SPCA or RSPCA respectively found out about it, you'd be in jail (or gaol, respectively) pretty quick smart. Has to vary LOTS depending on rainfall, quality of land, quality of pasture, time of year - so much. Some Australian cattle stations, a square mile can be just enough for a cow with calf in a good year.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), March 25, 2002.

Yep. Pigs eat chickens! Root up everything and may harass others (or just scare the bajeebers out of 'em)

However Sukey Cow, Weezy the ram, Nanny the goat (duh),15 geese and 30 chickens all happily cohabitating. Sukey's a little bossy and the sheep and goat are afraid of her but she is not mean to them out right so I let them stay together.

Also, have a space to feed the poultry that is out of the way of the big feet. I lost a gosling that got stepped on by a sheep in a grain rush.

It is nice to have the chickens to clean up left over/spilt grain and keep the buge down. The barn is cozy warm with everybody. And nothing really wants to try to hard to eat the little guys when there are big guys standing around.

-- Novina in ND (homespun@stellarnet.com), March 25, 2002.

=== Rogo, pigs eat ANYTHING. They just have to be hungry enough, and wake up to the fact that they can. ===

I've never raised critters in confinement. All my critters are on pasture 24/7. No one gets hungry. I haven't had a problem in over 25 years. Confinement would no doubt cause many problems.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), March 26, 2002.

Milage does vary quite a lot in running pigs with anything else but especially poultry. Some folks never seem to lose a bird but I've seen pigs eat chickens on many an occasion.

Chickens, cows, and goats together will work well but consider your stocking density. Here in North Florida it's *generally* considered two cows to the acre of decent pasture so you might be able to do one cow and four goats if the grass is thick and deep to start with. I'd keep it to one cow and two goats until I could observe how much of the grass they're eating. Unless you're running a lot of birds the poultry shouldn't significantly influence the grazing. In fact, they'll likely contribute to the grass growth more than the take away from it.

........Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), March 26, 2002.

I raise pigs and have not encountered the problem that many people have said about the pigs eating the chickens. My chickens run free with all of the animals and I have not yet had one eaten, so it basically depends on what and how much you are feeding your animals. As for the goats i also have dairy goats and some wehters and they are very hard to confine but can be keep very well in welded wire paneling, that seems to work the best. Also to previous answers no pigs don't eat anything or everything! Lisa

-- lisa munson (wndyhlls@newnorth.net), April 23, 2002.

I understand that some people have the room and the luck that their pigs have not eaten other animals, but I am reminded of and old joke about pigs, it was something like; "lay down with dogs you get fleas lay down with pigs you get eaten"

I was taught from a young age that pigs where dangerous, and told many stories of people, strong, full grown men, that where injured by pigs/hogs, people that knew the danger, and no doubt it was to keep me away from the pig pen, where a small child should not be, as well as clean and safe away from the bigger animals.

Yet, I also got the story of my Dad's pet pig (a sow)that he raised like a dog, slept with out in it's house so it wouldn't cry when it was small, and let it suck on his fingers, my grandmother told me of when he took it to be bred, she asked him how he would know his from the others that where there, he told her it was easy because all he had to do was wiggle his fingers and it would come to him, suck on his hand and follow him anywhere.

She also told me of the runt pig she had, that learned to come to the house when called for it's meals and then go back down to the pig yard, it had worn a path about 6 inches wide from the pen to the back door.

So how they are raised when babies [how much interaction with people] must make a difference.

-- Thumper/inOKC (slrldr@yahoo.com), April 24, 2002.