Can Goats Eat Jackfruit?

Can Goats Eat Jackfruit? (Is It Safe?)

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Yes, jackfruit is safe and healthy for goats. In fact, jackfruit has been shown to be highly beneficial and has in some cases even been trialed (in feed form) as livestock feed for farmed goats. Ultimately, your own goats should get most of their diet from hay and forage, but jackfruit is a great occasional treat for your goats.

 

Goats need to be fed a pretty carefully formulated diet, despite their reputation for eating anything. Jackfruit should only make up a small part of their diet, and should always be fed in moderation.

If you keep this in mind, your goats will love jackfruit as a treat.

But, before we look at goats, you may be curious about jackfruit itself.

So, let’s look into the fruit itself.

Can Goats Eat Jackfruit?

What is jackfruit?

Jackfruit trees are native to parts of Southern India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

The trees are suited to tropical lowlands, and are widely cultivated throughout the world.

The name jackfruit comes from the Portuguese jaca, which the Portuguese in turn got from the Malayalam term chakka.

The term ‘jackfruit’ first appears in English when a (still Portuguese) physician in a book he wrote about tropical medicines in the 16th Century.

Jackfruit have traditionally been most commonly used in South and Southeast Asian cuisines, both ripe and unripe.

Ripened jackfruit is much sweeter, and is more commonly used in desserts.

Canned jackfruit has a meat-like texture, so in the western world it’s become very popular as a meat substitute.

Jackfruit trees bear the largest fruit of any tree in the world, with the fruit reaching as much as 120 pounds in weight.

They are also so fertile a single tree can produce as many as 200 fruits in a year.

Older trees can bear even double that amount.

The fruit itself is composed of thousands of tiny, fleshy flowers which form the whole fruit.

This is known as a multiple fruit.

The fleshy petals are what is actually eaten.

 

What are the health benefits of jackfruit for goats?

Jackfruit is not short of health benefits for your goat.

The important thing to remember is moderation.

Fresh fruit should only make up a small part of your goat’s diet, as they are very high in a lot of sugars and other compounds which your goat will only be able to handle in small amounts.

Jackfruit makes a great occasional treat, then, as your goats will love it.

If you give them too much, it will quickly become a problem.

Having said that, there are numerous health benefits to jackfruit.

It is fairly rich in fiber, for one thing, which is an essential part of your goat’s diet.

Most of the fiber it needs will come from the hay that it eats, however.

Hay will make up the main part of your goat’s diet, as I said, and that’s where they’ll get most of the fiber they need.

They’ll always benefit from a little more though, and picking something as a treat that’s highly fibrous will go down very well with them.

They’re also rich in numerous vitamins which are essential to your goat’s diet, primarily vitamins A and C.

Vitamin A is important for a healthy immune system and internal organs in general.

Vitamin C is necessary for growth, development and repair. So, once any kids you have start eating solid foods, jackfruit will be great for them and their parents.

Vitamin C also helps absorbing iron for strong bones and teeth.

Jackfruit is not short on healthy minerals, either.

Primarily, jackfruit contains large amounts of magnesium, potassium, copper and manganese, all of which are essential to a healthy goat.

Jackfruit is not short of benefits, then.

This is all the more reason to keep moderation in mind.

A little of it as a treat will top off the rest of their diet very nicely, and the small amounts they get will be all they need to get the benefits from jackfruit.

Eating too much will oversaturate them with these vitamins and minerals and they will become sick.

So, jackfruit will be a great treat for your goats if fed properly and without excess.

Goats are fairly simple browsers in terms of their preferred diet, and like to spend most of their time either eating hay or roaming around in search of forage.

If you’ve got some spare jackfruit lying around, maybe you don’t know what you’re going to do with it before it goes bad, you could always give it to your goats.

Just remember that you can easily feed them too much, and doing so could cause quite a lot of discomfort for your goats.

This is about the worst you can expect, though, and jackfruit isn’t toxic or especially dangerous for goats in the right amounts.

 

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