How to Goat-Proof Trees

If you're raising goats, you need to protect your garden and trees from them. Goats are browsers, which means that they eat bushes, trees, and woody plants. They also prefer variety in their diet and so try most of the plants that are available. If you want to keep any flowers or bushes and trees, make sure they aren't growing in an area where your goats might go. You can fence them off, or in the case of trees, you can goat-proof them.

You need to remove any trees that are poisonous to goats and fence off or goat-proof any others you don't want destroyed.
Goats will damage and eventually kill trees by browsing on the leaves and shoots, stripping the bark, and rubbing their horns on the trees. Your goats cause worse damage when they don't have access to any other plants to eat, but they enjoy tender bark and leaves even when grass and shrubs are available.For smaller trees or saplings, can buy five-foot-tall tree bark protectors from a garden store. These mesh or corrugated plastic tubes were designed to fit around the tree trunks to protect them from deer.

You can goat-proof a larger tree by wrapping it up to the level that your largest goat can reach when standing with its front legs on the tree. You can determine this height by holding a treat up next to the tree and measuring how high the goat can reach. (If your goats aren't full-grown, you have to estimate.)