Whether bread is good for goats remains one of the most widely debated topics among breeders. While your goat would be more than happy to munch on a loaf of bread, you should consider its impact on their health.
Unsurprisingly, bread benefits goats, but only when you eat them in moderation. While they need the starch components in bread to help them keep their rumen healthy, excessive starch doesn’t help.
Good dieting is the most crucial aspect of rearing the animal. While goats can eat almost anything, it’s imperative to know that some food is more harmful to them than others. This article will explain all you need to know about feeding bread to goats and the potential benefits and drawbacks of doing so.
Can Goats Eat Bread?
Bread contains nutrients like magnesium, B vitamins, selenium oil, and iron, all of which improve your animal’s overall health. Although bread is good for goats in moderation, there is a little problem: bakers don’t bake the bread you see in retail stores for animals; they do it for humans!
It might not be a good idea to buy generic bread from the store and feed it to your goats. It will be much more beneficial if you can personally bake the bread your goats will consume yourself. Baking it yourself will allow you to add the necessary nutrients to benefit your goats.
If you can’t bake them yourself, you should be concerned about the type of bread you can buy at the store that will benefit your goat. Now, this little explanation leads us to the question; which bread types are healthy for goats?
Which Bread Types are Healthy for Goats
Your goats won’t die from eating a specific type of bread only once. However, if you plan to feed them the food consistently, you want to be sure you’re getting the healthiest kind for them. Here are some of the bread types that are healthiest for goats.
White Bread
White bread is an excellent treat to feed your goats. It contains almost 50% starch, which contributes massively to the development of ruminant animals.
However, you should avoid feeding them too much starch as it can lead to ruminal acidosis. Apart from the nutritional components, goats enjoy white bread and would munch it if you give them every time, but you should mainly serve it as a snack rather than a full meal.
Wheat Bread
Wheat bread remains one of the most beneficial kinds of bread you can feed your goats as it helps improve their digestive system. However, wheat bread still isn’t the optimal bread type for goats. So, you might want to inspect the nutritional information to ascertain if they’ll benefit from the treats.
A healthy wheat bread for your goat should have a fair composition of yeast, sugar, and water. You should avoid mixing the bread with other foods to make it purer for your goat.
Brown Bread
Brown bread is a good source of vitamins and minerals for your goats if you feed them in moderation. However, you should note that the whole grain concentration in wheat bread might harm your goats if you give it to them excessively. Nonetheless, the bread is still beneficial to your goats, thanks to the presence of wheat starch.
Sourdough Bread
Sourdough bread is one of the most nourishing to goats. It would help to understand that different bread have different nutritional components, so they benefit your goats in separate ways.
Sourdough bread is beneficial to your goat’s guts. The bread has less sugar than white bread but has around the same fiber content.
Whole Grain Bread
It’s okay to feed your goats whole grain breads as it helps their digestion because wholegrain bread has rich fiber content that massively helps your goats. If you’ve been following the article, you should know that most of the listed items contain dietary fiber.
However, the composition of the nutrients in these bread types is different. For instance, while whole grain bread has higher fiber than white bread, it has less sugar, making it healthier for your goats. In any case, that doesn’t give you a free pass to feed it to them excessively.
Which Bread Types are Unhealthy for Goats?
As we all know the healthy bread types for your goats, it’s essential to know the ones you shouldn’t feed them. Although your goats will eat most of this “unhealthy” bread, you aren’t doing them any good by giving it to them. Here are a few bread types you should avoid to ensure your animal stays healthy.
Moldy Bread
No matter the type of bread that you’re feeding your goats, you should avoid feeding them moldy bread. Moldy bread can cause serious health complications like excessive bloating, vomiting, stomach and digestive problems, etc. Avoid keeping the bread you want to feed your goats in moist conditions.
If you can, give your goats home-baked bread. If you can’t, inspect the bread thoroughly before serving them. If you employ someone to look after your pets, consider advising them on the dos and don’t of feeding bread to your goats.
Potato Bread
Potato bread isn’t harmful to your goats but it isn’t healthy either. It has a relatively small composition of nutrients that help your pet grow healthy and fit. Potato bread also has a very high sugar content which is a red flag.
Sweet Bread (Cakes, Bagels, Cookies, Muffins)
Sweet bread is another kind of bread you want to avoid feeding your goats. The reason is that sweet bread is called so because of its high sugar content, which isn’t beneficial to your goats.
While a few slices of the bread might be enough for the goats to deal with, why feed your goats little of what is dangerous? Moreover, there are better ones that will help your goats develop rather than put them at risk.
Any chocolate-flavored bread is also a no-no for goats. Chocolate contains theobromine which is dangerous for them. Some side effects of feeding your goats sweet or chocolate-flavored bread include obesity, digestive problem, elevated heart rate, etc.
How Much Bread is Sufficient for your Goat?
As hinted earlier in the article, you should feed your goats bread in moderation, but you might ask, how much is moderation?
You can give your goats bread every day or weekly if you want. Let’s assume the normal volume of bread that goats should eat is ten loaves per week; you’ll have to divide that by seven days to come up with the daily diet.
Typically, your goats should eat 1 to 2 loaves per day or around 12 loaves per week. Different factors like age, dietary habits, size, and weight contributes to the amount you should feed them. It’s advisable to consult your veterinarian for betters insight into how much bread your goat should consume.
Conclusion
That’s all you need to know about feeding bread to goats. As explained in the article, goats don’t only eat bread, but they enjoy them as long as you don’t overfeed them with the food. Don’t forget that bread also provides animals with nutrients that help them grow.
With that said, you should know the types of bread suitable for your goat and those you should avoid. Generally, it’s healthier to bake yourself if you trust your baking prowess. If that isn’t an option, you may use one of this article’s recommendations.
