Can Goats Eat Honeysuckle?

Can Goats Eat Honeysuckle? (Revealed!)

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Honeysuckle is largely safe for goats, though you must remember this is a broad term for many, many species. For the most part, they can eat and even enjoy honeysuckle no problem. In any case, moderation is really important—it should never be their main food source.

 

Some would say that there are honeysuckle plants with some degree of toxicity or risk factor for goats.

The important thing is to identify the particular species you have, and be sure of its toxicity.

The safest choice would be to leave it entirely.

As I say, honeysuckle includes a great many different species, and some can in the long term do liver damage.

Whatever you do, don’t let them eat a lot of honeysuckle.

Can Goats Eat Honeysuckle?

 

 

Is honeysuckle good for goats?

In a couple of ways, there are some broad, overarching factors you could point at to show that honeysuckle can be good for goats.

Goats are great foragers, and they love to roam around a large pasture looking for food.

This is important not just nutritionally, but also from a recreation and enrichment point of view.

Honeysuckle is an invasive weed most of the time, and a group of goats can make short work of a bush.

They will often love doing this, and it will provide a great deal of fiber and basic nutrition in that sense.

Beyond the opportunity to forage and for fiber, there’s not a lot to speak of in most honeysuckle species.

These two things are an important part of your goat’s diet, but they can get all of this and more elsewhere—without the added risk of the honeysuckle.

Let’s look at the precise nature of that risk.

 

Is honeysuckle dangerous for goats?

The answer to this question may depend on how cautious you consider yourself to be—for me, I always think it’s better to be safe than sorry.

So, as I said, honeysuckle is not a single plant—it is a genus of many, many species of flowering bushes and vines.

Most of them aren’t harmful at all, and even if they are, it’s only in very large quantities.

That said, honeysuckle can be extremely invasive, and may evade being completely destroyed even by goats.

Over time, if your goat continuously eats large amounts of some honeysuckle species, it can cause liver damage.

So, the simple answer is that it certainly can be, and the potential risk far outweighs the potential benefit.

So, what about these different varieties, then?

 

Can goats eat woodbine honeysuckle?

Woodbine honeysuckle, also called Virginia creeper, is a climbing vine native to North America, and one of the most common varieties of honeysuckle in the world.

It often has bright red leaves, and can cover walls and surfaces.

Woodbine does indeed contain toxic substances—though the precise degree to which is not known.

To be safe, if you see your goats eating it, you should probably try to remove it. that is the other important point, though—for the most part, goats know to leave things alone when they aren’t good for them.

In any case, it still pays to be cautious.

 

Can goats eat trumpet honeysuckle?

Another very common honeysuckle is known as the trumpet or coral honeysuckle.

This variety is native to the U.K., featuring bright red, orange and yellow tubular flowers.

They are popular due to both their pretty flowers but also, perhaps more importantly, the fact they are non-invasive.

The flowers, the leaves and the seeds are generally considered non-toxic, and have even been used in some medicinal remedies.

The berries, however, are poisonous, and quite potently so.

Don’t let your goats near trumpet honeysuckle.

This one shouldn’t be a problem in terms of being invasive, so if you find it, remove it immediately.

It should not return if you fully uproot it.

 

How can I tell what kind of honeysuckle I have?

This can be the most difficult part, since there are so many varieties and many of them look very different.

The simplest answer is just going to be sharing pictures with an expert—you can find many such services online.

Other than that, look into the most common varieties in your area.

You should be able to identify the one you have from a picture—although many different varieties do look quite similar.

In order to be completely sure, you should do your best to get confirmation from a botanist who knows their stuff.

There are hundreds of varieties of honeysuckle, so your best to be sure.

 

Honeysuckle is by no means a narrow definition, then.

There are so many plants that would fall under this classification that I wouldn’t be confident saying they are, as a whole, safe for goats to eat.

Some may enjoy some species, but whatever you do, it should not be a regular thing, and shouldn’t replace any part of their actual feed.

It should simply be forage for them to access.

If it were me, though, I would be safe and just remove it as best I could.

 

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