keeping goats together with pigs/chickens/turkeys

[demi]

i potentially want to keep 3 goats, 10 chickens, 5 turkeys and a pig all together in the 1 acre orchard, with separate housing for sleeping at night.

i know chickens and goats are fine together.
i know there is some disease that can be spread between the chickens and turkeys, but i think its possible to vaccinate them against it?
iv heard that pigs can kill other animals, but other people have said they will be fine. im assuming that if they are introduced as weaners then they will all get along??
is there any other diseases or problems in keeping them all together?

[little blue duck]

depends on what you want them for & what you are feeding them.
Layers pellets are potentially Fatal to goats (I have heard of several cases of dead & very ill goats who found their way to layers pellets)

One pig is a lonely pig.
We kept our boar with the goats while his future wives matured - he ate everything he could, and did pester them as he became sexually mature. And however awkward you think a randy male is... a femal in season is worse!!
So what gender & breed (ie size) are you thinking of getting?

the poultry will be after everything elses' cereal food - so if you're wanting layers they may get fat on grain. ANd a hungry pig or goat will find a way into their housing if you feed them in there. Pigs are a million times stronger than you can imagine!

Goats will strip an apple tree of all its leaves & bark if they feel like it - they 'll need other browse too,
not grazing as much.

Pigs will eat all the eggs they find & can eat small birds (heard of some that ate a buzzard once!)
and even with nesting boxes, a broody hen will lay wherever she chooses

If you are allowing them all the whole orchard, the pig (s) will root it up, making it unpleasant for the goats.
goats also need access to shelter - they hate rain & wind, and won't thank you to fight for space with a sleepy pig, unless they can climb over them! which they will, especially goat kids playing "king of the castle!"

if you want milking goats, you'll ned somewhere well, well, well away from the others to milk - tpigs & chickens will be in the buckets as soon as look at you!

on the whole, things like worms & most diseases shouldn't pass from one to the other (except of course the chooks & turkeys) but beware that things like coccidiosis could kill any of the young ones.

hope that helps, and doesn't read too negative.

[Potter's Farm]

Have a friend whose kune kune pig was caught killing and eating his chickens.....one of our goats got into our chicken pen once and ate a huge amount of layers pellets. She was ill for several days, feel lucky now that she survived at all.

[demi]

thanks for that.
im thinking the pig should be kept separate. we were only going to get 1 pig because i think 2 would be too much for us to eat ( we are 2 adults and 2 small kids). but i thought if we kept it with the goats they'd keep each other company. and i thought a female pig would be easier to handle.
we have an electric fence so its not a problem penning them in and rotating them round the veggy plot, which we would have done anyway at some point to root up and manure the soil.

as for the goats eating the chicken grain, i guess we can feed the chickens inside their house with just a wee door open for them to get in and out so the goats cant get at it. iv seen goats and chickens being kept together before quite happily.
we were thinking of growing other things inbetween the trees for the goats to eat, like alfalfa and other fodder crops, plus just letting it get over grown with grass/weeds so they have a variety of stuff to forrage for during the day.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Blackhead (histomoniasis) is a serious disease of turkeys that affects the liver and is frequently fatel if not treated. Chickens are quite commonly carriers of this disease, though are not greatly affected by it.

Treatment is via dosing of the water, but I can't recall the name of the drug. I don't believe that there is a vaccine.

Conventional advice is that turkeys should be reared well away from other poultry and should not run on ground that has been recently used by other birds.

[demi]

so if i keep them up to date with preventative treatment they should be ok? but will the medicine in the water affect the quality of the meat, is it safe to consume?
that goes for all treatment too. is there a time period you have to wait between treating the aminals for whatever ( worms/vaccines ect) and slaughtering the animals for consumption?

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I understand that the drugs used against bleackhead are for treatment rather than as a preventative, and I'm not sure that giving medicaments to animals who are not actually ill is a good idea, though I know that anibiotics and the like are used as prophylatics in factory farming.

The best thing to do, in my view, is to keep the turkey's seperate and try to avoid the problem.

Normally there is a time period between administering any drug to animals and eating them. It will vary from product to product and you'd need to consult the manufacturer's literature.

[peat]

as for the goats eating the chicken grain, i guess we can feed the chickens inside their house with just a wee door open for them to get in and out so the goats cant get at it. iv seen goats and chickens being kept together before quite happily.

Bare in mind that goats can get through suprisingly small gaps. Best to have the opening higher up rather than at ground level. But yeah we have goats and chickens living together with few problems.