This old photo of one of my Angora goats eating a thistle makes me cringe every time I see it. I was amazed the first time I saw one of my goats eating a thistle. Canadian Thistles are a nasty piece of work. Their spiny leaves are very painful to touch and the spines are on both the leaves and the stem. Watching a goat pluck off part of a thistle plant, then rolling it around in its mouth, always made me wonder what kind of skin they must have on their tongue and inside their mouth. I would have thought their mouth would have started bleeding.
I have an intense hate for thistles. They are extremely persistent plants which can spread not only by their seeds, but also their roots. I have spent hours every summer whacking them down so they don’t spread, but I never saw much profit from all those labors. I was therefore very happy to see that my goats would eat them, but they were only interested in them when the thistles reached a certain stage of growth; just when the flowers started to form.
The goats didn’t really make much difference in the amount of thistle plants I had, but it gave me satisfaction every time I saw them eating one.
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