Cashews are one of the most popular nuts available around the world, eaten in every corner of the globe.
As with almost anything, for those of us who own goats, it’s natural to wonder whether we can share cashews with our goats—so can goats eat cashews?
Goats can safely eat cashews, and there’s nothing about them that makes them dangerous or toxic.
But you’ve still always got to be careful of what you’re feeding them, and their diet as a whole.
Let’s look further into this.
Are cashews good for goats?
Yes, cashews are good for goats in a variety of ways.
For one thing, your goats will most likely love them, and enjoy eating them as a snack.
The value of having a lot of tasty snacks on your goat’s menu is enormous and will make them overall happier mentally.
This will have a knock-on effect on their physical health.
Beyond that, though, cashews are packed with many nutritional benefits.
They are a great source of fiber, for one thing.
Fiber is the backbone of a goat’s diet and should make up the great bulk of what they eat.
Though they’ll get most of what they need from hay and/or forage, they can really never have too much.
Cashews are also a great source of many important vitamins.
Vitamin K, for example, is found in abundance in cashews.
This helps in the process of making proteins for aiding blood clotting, as well as building bones.
These nuts also contain a lot of vitamin B6.
This helps to regulate amino acids in the blood, helping chemical reactions in the immune system—overall, this helps your goat to better defend against infection.
Cashews are also rich in many essential minerals.
Copper, magnesium, manganese, zinc, phosphorus, iron, selenium—the list goes on.
Nuts are often a great source of minerals, and all of these serve a huge variety of functions in the body.
Cashews are particularly copper rich, and this is good for goats as they are very often copper deficient.
Plainly, then, cashews are great for your goat’s health in a whole host of ways.
This very fact, though, should give you pause.
Are cashews bad for goats?
No, cashews are not inherently bad for goats.
There’s nothing about cashews that is toxic or dangerous for goats, and they can eat them safely.
That said, there are some very important caveats to the question.
As I’ve said, the biggest thing to keep in mind is moderation.
You’ve got to be careful of precisely how much your goats eat.
Though they are overall low in sugar, nuts just aren’t a typical part of a goat’s diet.
So, they are only really capable of breaking down a small amount.
Most of what a goat eats should be raw plant matter.
Forage, and/or hay, and fruits and vegetables.
Cashews, like many nuts, can have their place, but only in strict moderation occasionally.
Once or twice a week, at most, is plenty of cashews for your goats.
Be sure to swap them out with other treats during the rest of the week.
This ensures they get the best variety of benefit as well as keeping them from becoming bored.
If you overfeed your goat on cashews, then they can end up bloated, and with all sorts of other digestive problems.
Can goats eat salted cashews?
You might be wondering about different kinds of cashews.
Well, this is an important question.
We often like to buy our nuts salted.
Is this safe for goats?
The short answer is no.
Goats should be getting their salt from a salt lick or mineral block of some kind.
They don’t need the concentrations of salt that you would find in salted cashews, or indeed any kind of salted nut.
Do not give your goats salted cashews.
Can goats eat cooked cashews?
They can, but there’s really no benefit to giving them cooked cashews.
Some of the nutritional content will be lost in the cooking process, not to mention the possibility that they were cooked in oils or spices that are unsafe for goats.
Don’t give your goats cooked cashews.
Can goats eat raw cashews?
Yes, if you’re going to give your goat cashews, give them raw cashews.
This will provide the best flavor and texture, and they will contain all of the beneficial nutrients we’ve talked about.
The diet you give them should be the best approximation of what they might eat in the wild.
Though goats are unlikely to find wild cashews in their daily lives, nonetheless they would be raw were they to find them.
Even then, though, moderation is still important—no more than once or twice a week.
So, however you look at it, goats can definitely eat cashews—it’s just about moderating the amounts they get.
Goats have a pretty simple diet overall, and they don’t need a huge variety of foods to remain happy and healthy.
That said, they do still need balance.
This means giving them treats like cashews but only in strict moderation.
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