What Goats Eat: Grass, Hay and Very Little Else
Goats have a reputation for eating anything, and it is wrong. This is what a goat actually eats through a whole year, what the published welfare guidance requires you to provide, and the short list of things that will make one ill.
What do goats eat?
Goats eat forage: grass, hay and browse such as twigs, leaves and hedgerow. The RSPCA states that hay should form around half of a goat's diet each day. Small amounts of goat mix, a mineral lick and constant fresh water complete it. Goats are browsers rather than grazers, so they choose variety over volume.
This page answers the question for goats in general, because the answer is much the same whatever the breed. What changes with the breed is the quantity, and for the animals we keep that sits in our guide to keeping pygmy goats.
FORAGE
About half the daily diet
Hay and grazing carry it. The RSPCA puts hay at around half of what a goat eats each day.
BROWSE
Leaves before grass
Goats are browsing animals, not grazing ones. Offered a hedge, they take the hedge first.
ROOM TO EAT
One feeding place each
The welfare code requires enough trough space that goats fed in a group are not competing.
Are goats grazers or browsers?
Goats are browsers, and the difference is not a technicality. The RSPCA describes them as browsing rather than grazing animals, and the DEFRA welfare code says they prefer coarse forages and tree branches and need a comparatively large quantity of bulky feed.
A goat turned out onto short, even grass is not in its natural feeding position, however green the field looks. Given the choice it takes the hedge before the sward, and it takes the top of the plant before the bottom. If you have watched a goat work along a hedgerow. You will have seen it strip the leaves and leave the grass entirely.
This matters when you are planning ground. Paddock that would keep a sheep in good order can leave a goat bored and picking at things it should not, which is where most of the trouble with goats and gardens starts.
How much hay does a goat need?
Hay should be about half of what a goat eats each day, and more than that when there is no grass. That figure is the RSPCA's. The British Goat Society goes further and calls good hay the single most important item of the diet, with at least half the ration by dry weight coming from forage of some kind.
Both readings point the same way, and neither of them is really about hay. They are about the rumen. A goat is built to process long fibre slowly, and a diet that is short of it produces a goat that looks fed and is not.
The practical version is that hay is not the thing you top up with. It is the thing the diet is made of, and everything else is arranged around it.
Quality is doing as much work as quantity here. Hay that is dusty, or cut late and stemmy, gets picked over and wasted, and a goat that wastes half its hay is eating half its hay.
What do goats eat in winter?
In winter goats eat hay, and the quality of it decides how they come out the other side. Grass in west Cornwall does not stop entirely, but it stops growing, and browse goes with the leaves.
This is what we find here, and it is the part of the year that separates keepers who planned from keepers who improvised. Grass, mostly, and good hay to fill the gap when the grass stops growing. Hay is not a winter extra here, it is most of the winter diet, and the quality of it shows in their condition by February.
Or put the other way round. The hay you buy in August is the condition your goats are in at the end of the following winter.
Hay is bought on quality, not on price, and the difference does not show until February. A goat that has spent the winter picking through dusty, stemmy hay has eaten far less of it than the bale weight suggests.
Snow changes nothing about what they want. It only removes the alternatives.
When the grass is gone, hay is the whole diet rather than a supplement.
What do I feed a goat?
Most of what a goat eats is not bought at all. Hay and grazing carry the diet, and what you buy on top of them is small: a goat mix in modest amounts, a mineral lick, and for some goats a little sugar beet pulp. There is one published UK daily ration worth quoting, and it is the British Goat Society's. It is written for a milking goat of sixty kilograms, which is a very different animal from a pygmy at maintenance, so read it as a shape rather than as a scoop.
A PUBLISHED DAILY RATION, FOR A 60 KG MILKING GOAT
- Good hay, 0.5 kg.
- Grass, 4.3 kg.
- High energy goat mix at 14 per cent crude protein, 1.0 kg.
- Sugar beet pulp, 0.2 kg.
- For a 90 kg goat the society raises the grass to 5.0 kg and the concentrate to 1.3 kg.
British Goat Society, Feeding, last modified 12 November 2016. Read 7 September 2026.
That ration is for a large goat in milk. We have not found an equivalent published ration for a pygmy goat at maintenance, and we are not going to scale this one down and present the arithmetic as guidance. Where a figure does not exist, we would rather say so.
What a goat needs beyond forage is small and it is easy to overdo. Goat feed in small amounts, fresh water always, and a mineral lick. Treats in moderation, because a fat pygmy goat is an unhealthy one and they will happily get there.
The DEFRA welfare code is blunt about the risk in the other direction, and warns that overfeeding concentrated food causes bloat, acidosis, laminitis and obesity. Concentrate is the part of the bucket that does damage, and it is the part people are most generous with.
How much water does a goat need?
Water has to be available all the time, and that is a requirement rather than a recommendation. The DEFRA code states that goats should have access to sufficient fresh, clean water at all times, and that where this is impossible for any reason it must be provided at least twice daily.
The RSPCA adds a detail that sounds trivial and is not. Goats often prefer water that is a little warm, and a goat that will not drink in cold weather is a goat eating less dry forage as well. If you keep goats through a wet Cornish winter. Or anywhere the trough ices at the edges. Checking the water is a daily job rather than a weekly one.
WHAT THE WELFARE CODE ACTUALLY REQUIRES ON FEED AND WATER
- A balanced diet daily. Paragraph 11 states that goats should receive daily a balanced diet which is adequate to maintain full health and vigour.
- Water at all times. The same paragraph requires access to sufficient fresh, clean water at all times, or at least twice daily where that is impossible.
- Bulk before concentrate. Paragraph 13 states that goats require a comparatively large quantity of bulky feed, and warns against overfeeding concentrates.
- Room to eat. Paragraph 24 requires sufficient trough space or feeding points to avoid undue competition for food where goats are fed in groups.
DEFRA, Code of recommendations for the welfare of livestock: goats, published 15 August 2023, made under section 3(1) of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968. Read 7 September 2026.
What should you never feed a goat?
Do not feed a goat any plant you cannot name. The RSPCA lists yew, rhododendron, laurel, privet, laburnum, foxglove, hemlock, ragwort and bulbs such as tulips and daffodils among the plants to keep goats away from, and its own rule is the one worth keeping: when in doubt, do not feed.
The list that matters most is the one for your own ground rather than the one in a guide. The plants we keep them away from are azaleas, rhubarb leaves and onions. If you are planting near a goat paddock, check first rather than after.
Sudden change is its own hazard, separately from anything poisonous. Both the RSPCA and the British Goat Society warn that goats do not cope well with abrupt changes of diet, because the bacteria in the rumen need time to adjust.
And a goat that turns down feed it normally eats is telling you something. The British Goat Society states that a goat refusing accustomed feed is most likely ill. That is a call to a vet rather than a change of bucket, and a vet is the only person who can decide for an individual animal.
Where to read on
If the goats you are looking at were advertised as miniature goats, mini goats or micro goats, it is worth knowing what those words actually mean in Britain before you buy, because none of them is a recognised breed. Feeding also sits next to two things it cannot be separated from: the land and shelter the food comes off, and worming and routine health, because what a goat eats and what lives in its gut are the same subject.
If you are weighing up whether to keep goats at all, the ground and the fencing decide more than the feed does, and both are covered in our beginners guide above. For what a farm stay around animals actually involves, including feeding them, there is our piece on farm stays with animal encounters. If you are curious how different the same question is for a bird rather than a ruminant, choosing a first bird of prey begins in the same place and ends somewhere else entirely. The rest of the writing from the farm sits in the journal.
COME AND MEET THEM
Our goats are here on the working farm in west Cornwall, along with the horses, an owl and a red-tailed hawk. If you would like to see how a small herd is actually kept and fed before taking any on yourself, our farm holiday cottage looks out over their paddock.
Feed Notes
Frequently asked questions about feeding goats. These are the smaller ones, answered plainly.
What is the best thing to feed my goats?
Good hay. The British Goat Society calls good hay the single most important item of the diet, and the RSPCA puts hay at around half of what a goat eats each day. Everything else you buy is a supplement to that, not a replacement for it.
Can goats eat carrots?
Yes, in small amounts, as a treat rather than as part of the ration. Carrots add nothing a goat needs that good forage does not already provide, so they are a way of making friends with a goat rather than a way of feeding one.
Can goats eat apples?
Yes, in small amounts. Apples are safe as an occasional treat for a healthy adult goat. We have not found a published UK figure for how much fruit is safe in a day, so the honest answer is a handful rather than a bowlful.
Can goats eat bananas?
Yes, as an occasional treat and in small amounts. The rule is the same as for any fruit: it sits outside the ration rather than inside it, and it should not be displacing forage.
Can goats eat bread?
Bread is better treated as a concentrate than as a treat. The DEFRA welfare code warns that overfeeding concentrated food causes bloat, acidosis, laminitis and obesity, and bread behaves far more like concentrate than like forage. A crust now and then is not the problem. A loaf is.
What vegetables can goats eat?
Roots and leafy greens are generally safe in small quantities, and the RSPCA specifically names roots, twigs and leaves as browsings worth providing. What matters more is the other list. The RSPCA names yew, rhododendron, laurel, privet, laburnum, foxglove, hemlock, ragwort and bulbs such as tulips and daffodils among the plants to keep goats away from.
What is a goat's favourite snack?
Whatever it has been offered most recently. Goats will take almost anything from a hand, which is exactly why the amount is a decision for the keeper rather than for the goat. A fat goat is an unhealthy goat, and they will happily get there.
DEFRA, Code of recommendations for the welfare of livestock: goats, published 15 August 2023. RSPCA, Goat diet. British Goat Society, Feeding, last modified 12 November 2016. All three read 7 September 2026.