Can you Keep Goats and Sheep Together?

At first glance, goats and sheep seem very similar. In reality, however, they are not and it’s for this reason I highly recommend not keeping them together in the long term. Whilst sheep have been heavily domesticated, goats remain fairly unchanged from their wild counterparts meaning behaviour and physiology can be difficult to integrate with sheep.

PARASITES

Though the majority of parasites such as worms and flukes are species specific, they are interchangeable between sheep and goats. This isn’t a problem if you’re taking management parasite loads carefully and ensuring they’re minimal at all times. But problems can still arise.

In my experience, goats are far more vulnerable than sheep when it comes to worms, flukes and coccidiosis. They dehydrate extremely quickly and whilst a sheep with scours can survive several days as you treat it for any potential parasite outbreak, goats have a ticking clock that seems to diminish in a blink of an eye. Even if you’re using a pasture rotation process (as I outline here) worm loads can creep up on you quickly.

Isolate ill goats and treat immediately to avoid losses. And use continuous monitoring, including egg counts and FAMACHA scores, to stay on top of problems.

BEHAVIOUR

Goats are extremely different to sheep in their behaviour, being a lot more boisterous and physical than their woolly counterparts. Whilst you can expect some headbutting and shoving from sheep now and then as part of their hierarchy control, goats can be extremely physical with each other on a constant basis.

Goats will headbutt and stand on their hind legs to confront each other not only to establish the pecking order but also simply to play. This can cause issues if you’re keeping them alongside sheep as they can do significantly damage to sheep, even if by accident. In fact, I once kept wethers alongside pregnant nannies and experienced several still births. It was only after watching the rowdy castrated boys that I realised they were extremely rough with the nannies, hence me losing kids late in pregnancy. Alongside a flock of sheep, this can have similar, if not worse, results.

FENCING

When it comes to fencing, goats are canny things. Sheep can often be kept within a few strands of electric fencing. If you’re using stock fencing or post and rail, sheep will do little damage. This is not to be said for goats, which will leap and tangle themselves in polywire, stand on stock fencing to reach hedges and leaves above, and rub, grind and even eat post and rail boundaries.

If you don’t want escapees, you need much better fencing for goats than sheep. My goats easily clear 80cm high stock fencing, which means you either need enclosures with additional post and rail on top, or a line of electrified polywire around the top.

GRAZING HABITS

Whilst I would call sheep grazers, I would certainly deem goats as foragers. They will eat grass but they far prefer to access to hedgerows and rough forage to pick through. If you have long grass, therefore, it’s far better to use sheep and attempt to have goats to keep it clipped and neat. Keeping sheep and goats together would deprive the goats of their natural and favourite hedgerow and wild plants.

Though you can keep goats and sheep together, I advise against it in the long term for both their sakes. And yours. It actually takes, in my opinion, more effort to look after combined flocks than to enjoy separate herds.