Pumpkin Drive 2025: Treats for Goats, Pigs & Chickens!

Suddenly, it’s upon us: we had to through another Hurricane Season and passed Halloween and it’s time for our annual pumpkin drive!

We’ve already taken a few rounds of pumpkins from the shop to the farm and Paul from the Tent Man Party Rentals in Mandeville also brought us a load from his pumpkin patch, so we’re off to the races!

Usually we have some pumpkin patch leftovers at the beginning of November, some carved pumpkins and then the real onslaught comes after Thanksgiving. If you have beautiful heirloom pumpkins that aren’t carved, there’s definitely no need to part with them right away!

To illustrate this, the first two pictures show the difference between November 29th and December 3rd of last year. A lot of them come at once!

As usual, you can drop off in the parking lots of the shop any time (although we would prefer you come during business hours and patronize the shop and see us!). The address is 4516 Clearview Parkway, Metairie and we’re open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.

You can also drop off at the farm during the hours we’re open for loading soil and compost (Wednesday-Saturday, 7 am to 12:30 pm). Or at a farm tour!

We just ask that there is no paint, glitter, glue or tacks and that they aren’t rotting and falling apart.

And while we love to rescue as many pumpkin as we can and feed out to our animals, reminder that with the exception of decorative gourds and bottle gourds, all of these pumpkins are edible, so we encourage you to hack them up and roast them! You can eat them roasted like butternut squash or puree and freeze for cooking and baking with throughout the year!

Since there’s just something sweet about seeing animals go to town on pumpkins, the rest is just a collection of photos from recent years!

I do have homesteaders and fellow goat keepers ask me how we got our goats to eat pumpkins because their goats don’t!

Mostly I think it’s just generational — the young ones mimic their moms!

Often goats will just eat the seeds and shy away from trying the flesh of the pumpkin. And goats are big on nibbling lots of samples of various plants, waiting to see how their bodies feel and then going back for more. So at some point years ago, some of ours went for it, the others copied them and then now the older ones remember and don’t hesitate when the pumpkins start rolling in each November!

Interestingly, last fall we had the market bucks separated from the doe herd. And when we offered pumpkins to those 20 bucks (who were born in January 2024, after we were done feeding pumpkins for the year), they never really ate them. Meanwhile their sisters and cousins who were with their mothers gorged on the pumpkins. They just had to see their moms eating them and they tried it themselves!

One year we had a stray goat we took care of and we kept her separate from the main herd. She similarly only ate the seeds at first until I cut the pumpkins into pieces that were easier for her to bite and then she was a convert.

The pigs, however, never need any convincing to try pumpkins! Even the four-week-old piglets are getting in on the action. And the one-week-old piglets, while not eating feed or any kind yet, are curious, too!

And the chickens love pumpkins, too! Like the other animals, they go for the seeds first and then peck the skin of the pumpkin down to a paper thin shell!

Some years we’ve offered pumpkin to the cattle, but they’re even more timid to try them than the goats are, so the last couple of years, we just save them primarily for the goats and pigs and then feed any excess to the chickens.

With warm season forages petering out and a frost coming, it’s an especially great time of year to have the pumpkins for the goats since we don’t feed them grain.

Thank you to everyone who has already brought pumpkins this year or previous years. Spread the word and keep them coming!