Goats eat a wide range of grasses, but they actually prefer browsing on shrubs, trees, and weeds over grazing on grass. When they do eat grass, bermudagrass, orchardgrass, crabgrass, and timothy are among the best options. Understanding which grasses work well (and which to avoid) makes a real difference in keeping goats healthy and well-fed year round.
Goats Are Browsers First, Grazers Second
Unlike cattle or sheep, goats naturally favor browse over grass. Left to their own preferences, goats consume a diet of more than 80% browse, meaning leaves, twigs, bark, and broadleaf weeds. Grass fills in the gaps rather than forming the foundation of their diet. This is why goats are so effective at clearing brushy land and why a pure grass pasture, while workable, isn’t ideal for them.
That said, plenty of goat owners raise healthy animals on improved grass pastures, especially when the pasture includes a mix of grasses, legumes like clover, and whatever natural browse grows along fence lines and wooded edges. The key is choosing grasses with enough protein and digestibility to meet your goats’ needs.
Best Grass Species for Goat Pastures
Research from the University of Georgia Extension ranks goat forage preferences into tiers. The most desirable grasses for goats are bermudagrass, crabgrass, and orchardgrass. Less desirable options include sorghum-sudan grass and Kentucky 31 tall fescue (more on why fescue is problematic below).
These grasses break into two categories based on growing season, and combining both types gives your goats fresh forage for more of the year:
- Warm-season grasses (grow June through early September): Bermudagrass, crabgrass, big bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass, and eastern gamagrass. These thrive during summer heat when cool-season grasses go dormant.
- Cool-season grasses (grow spring and fall): Orchardgrass, timothy, Kentucky bluegrass, and red fescue. These fill the gap in early spring and late fall when warm-season grasses haven’t started or have stopped growing.
Planting a mix of warm and cool-season grasses in different areas of your pasture means goats have something green and nutritious available across most of the year, rather than relying on a single species that peaks for a few months and then declines.
How Much Protein Goats Need From Forage
A goat just maintaining its body weight needs forage with 7% to 9% crude protein and about 50% total digestible nutrients. That’s a low bar, and most decent grass pastures clear it. The demands jump significantly for pregnant does in their final weeks, nursing does, and growing kids. These animals need up to 16% crude protein and 70% total digestible nutrients.
Most grasses alone fall short of that 16% mark, which is where legumes become important. Alfalfa contains roughly 17% to 20% crude protein, and red clover sits around 14% to 15%. Mixing clover or alfalfa into a grass pasture naturally boosts the protein available to your herd without requiring as much supplemental grain. A pasture blend of orchardgrass, red fescue, red clover, and white clover is a common combination that works well in cooler climates.
Why Tall Fescue Can Be Dangerous
Kentucky 31 tall fescue is one of the most common pasture grasses in the eastern United States, but it carries a hidden problem. Most stands of K-31 are infected with a fungus that produces toxic compounds called ergot alkaloids. These chemicals constrict blood vessels throughout the body, and the effects hit pregnant and nursing animals especially hard.
In pregnant goats and sheep, the restricted blood flow reduces nutrient delivery to the developing offspring, leading to smaller, weaker kids at birth. The toxins also suppress prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production. Does grazing infected fescue often produce significantly less milk, which means their kids grow more slowly after birth. Chronic exposure can also restrict blood flow to reproductive organs, reducing fertility over time.
If your pasture already contains tall fescue, look for “novel endophyte” varieties, which UGA Extension lists as a more desirable option. These cultivars contain a different fungal strain that doesn’t produce the harmful alkaloids, giving you the hardiness of fescue without the toxicity.
Grasses and Plants That Are Toxic to Goats
Several grass species are outright dangerous. Cornell University’s poisonous plant database lists Johnson grass, sorghum, sudan grass, downy brome grass, squirreltail grass, and poison ryegrass as toxic to livestock including goats. Johnson grass and sorghum are particularly risky because they can produce cyanide compounds, especially when stressed by drought or frost. If these grasses grow in or near your pasture, removing them or fencing goats away from them is worth the effort.
Grass Hay for Winter and Off-Season Feeding
When fresh pasture isn’t available, hay becomes the primary forage source. Orchardgrass hay is widely recommended as a baseline for all goats. It’s palatable, reasonably high in nutrients, and goats waste less of it compared to stemmy alternatives.
Timothy hay works too, though it tends to have thicker stems that goats pick through and discard. For does that need extra protein, a 50/50 blend of orchardgrass and alfalfa provides a good balance. For wethers (castrated males), keep alfalfa to less than 10% of the hay mix. Alfalfa’s high calcium content is thought to contribute to urinary calculi, a painful and sometimes fatal blockage in male goats.
Even when goats still have access to browse in winter, the nutritional quality of dormant brush and dried-out weeds drops considerably. Hay should be available in their shelter throughout winter months regardless of what’s still standing in the pasture.
Grazing Height and Parasite Prevention
How you manage your grass matters as much as which species you plant. Intestinal parasites are one of the biggest health threats to goats, and the larvae concentrate in the bottom few inches of grass, close to the soil where manure falls. Penn State Extension recommends leaving at least four inches of forage in the field before rotating goats to a new area. Letting goats graze pasture down to the dirt dramatically increases their parasite load.
Rotational grazing, where you divide pasture into sections and move goats every few days or weeks, gives each section time to rest. The parasite larvae die off without a host during the rest period, and the grass regrows to a safe grazing height. This approach keeps both your pasture and your goats healthier than continuous grazing on a single field.