A goat’s diet should be made up mainly of hay and roughage, and they will eat between 2 and 4 pounds a day.
They should also be able to forage and hunt around a pasture for things they might like, such as roots and fresh grass.
If this makes up around 80-85% of your goat’s diet, then you won’t have a problem topping it up with a little treat at the end.
If there is 15% remaining of your goat’s nutrition, bread should make up a small part of this, not the whole remaining part.
With all that in mind, let’s look at bread itself.
Where was bread invented?
Bread is without doubt one of the oldest, most universal and most enduring staple foods.
The oldest evidence we have is from around 30,000 years ago, where in parts of Europe we find evidence of starch residue on rocks.
These rocks were used for pounding plants, and it is hypothesized that starch from plants was spread on rocks and cooked over fire, as a primitive form of flatbread.
We have evidence of more advanced bread making techniques in a Natufian sight in modern day Jordan, which is around 14,500 years old.
Bread was clearly being made long, long before humans kept any kind of written records.
So, it is effectively impossible to say where bread first emerged.
Even the oldest evidence we have is just that: what we have. Older evidence has certainly been lost to time.
The interesting point here is that humans have also been herding goats in that part of the world for just as long as they’ve been making bread.
Plainly, we can’t know what prehistoric goat herders fed their goats, and it probably wasn’t bread.
Nonetheless, the keeping of goats and the making of bread are two activities which seem to have gone hand in hand for a long time.
What types of bread can goats eat?
Goats, as I’m sure you know if you have any, are unlikely to turn down a snack offered to them, especially if they’ve never seen or tried it before.
Different breads can vary greatly in terms of ingredients, so let’s look at the nutritional differences between bread types.
White bread, the most common in the Western world, is very good for goats in small amounts.
Goats need a very high fiber diet, and bread can provide at least some of this.
White bread is also almost half starch, which is very important not just to goats but all ruminants.
Starch promotes healthy digestion through carbohydrates and the flow of protein in the digestive system.
Again, the important thing to remember is that, while white bread does offer these benefits, they are better off getting the vast majority of what they need from somewhere else in their diets.
Too much starch can cause acidosis, an excess of acid in the body, which can cause a host of problems and discomfort.
Wheat bread is a little different.
It contains much smaller amounts of fiber, which is one of the main benefits to giving goats bread.
The starch in wheat bread is also highly fermentable, therefore it is much easier to cause acidosis.
Given the high starch content in wheat bread, it’s probably safest to just avoid it.
If your goats like bread, try to give them white bread.
Rye, wholegrain and sourdough breads are all pretty safe for goats, again in small amounts.
Rye and wholegrain breads contain great amounts of fiber, though both are fairly high in starch, and so like with any other bread should be fed in moderation.
Sourdough is a good alternative to white bread, as it contains less than half the sugar of white bread.
It has a tiny fiber content, however, which is one of the main advantages to giving goats bread.
But it contains about as much as white bread, so sourdough probably is the best option.
Sweetbreads and cakes should be avoided.
Cake of pretty much any kind, muffins, banana bread, pumpkin bread, even hard breads like crackers are way too high in sugar for goats and will cause them harm.
No doubt your goat will want it if you have cake or sweetbread near them, but in this case, they don’t really know what’s best for them.
Don’t give goats cake.
Bread and goats make a great pair, then.
Both have been by humans’ side for millennia untold, providing us with sustenance and companionship.
It’s pretty natural to want to feed your goat bread or at least wonder if bread is safe for it when it’s such a staple of our diet.
The basic answer, as you’ve seen, is that it definitely is safe. It should only represent an occasional treat, though, as in anything more than very small quantities it can begin to cause problems.
That in mind, your goat will love a piece of bread.
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