The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Other => Topic started by: Carse Goodlifers on October 05, 2014, 12:17:58 pm
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As my 2 part query covers various livestock and plants I thought that it would be best suited here.
1. I am wondering are fruit trees and especially plums, poisonous to sheep, goats, cattle, poultry and pigs?
This includes the tree bark, fallen fruit and foliage (in the green or dying as in autumn).
I have looked at this subject and I get mixed findings - some say the leaves from a plum tree are not good for goats and sheep and nor are the fruit. Pigs obviously eat fallen apples. I do know that some fruit seeds/stones do contain traces of cyanide.
2. Does anyone keep livestock under an orchard for lengthy periods of time?
I would be grateful for your thoughts, comments and experiences of the above please.
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Where's plums everywhere? She'll have an answer for you.
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I only know about sheep. They love fruit trees, to the extent that generations of sheep have done their best to destroy my orchard. They will happily eat leaves, twigs and bark. We do have plum trees but I haven't noticed if the also like or avoid plum. Currently though I have two old biddies living in my orchard, and one in particular is addicted to golden gage fruits. The tree was so loaded this year that I ran out of space, and need, to preserve them. Balou the ancient Soay hangs around under the golden gage, waiting for the fruit to drop down - having already picked every gage she could possibly stretch up to. She doesn't eat the stones, but spits them out and my JR crunches them up. It all seems a bit bizarre.
Only the poultry seem interested in fallen apples, but Balou also eats raspberries, gooseberries (Pax, the dessert variety) and any other soft fruit she can get her jaws round.
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We had sheep in an orchard for years without any ill effects. Wide variety of fruit -apples, pears, damsons, plums (4 trees so fruit every year) and cherries. Same with chickens, but did suffer from digestive impaction with damsons. The fruit is small enough for a piggy Orpington to swallow whole, but the stones won't go through the system. We had to fell the damson trees. Cherries are questionable- vital that the birds are wormed regularly or those stones won't go through either. We've just been caught out with that problem here. Most chickens peel the flesh off the stone, but not our Orpingtons -they swallow them whole. Had some hybrids got drunk eating fallen pears as well -quite funny really because they stood motionless with 'glazed' eyes then couldn't walk properly.
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My small flock of Marian's hens are fenced in around the greengage trees and pick at any lower leaves or dropped fruit without ill effect. The other flock are around a large bramley apple tree and sit in the tree pecking at the odd leaves or eating windfall apples.