Is it harmful for goats to eat newspaper?

First Answer: The ink is poisonous unless your paper uses soy ink. However, if the rabbit is not eating the paper, but simply chewing the paper, that is okay.

Actually, it would be safe to say that ingesting a small bit of paper wouldn't hurt them, because rabbits also tend to chew their litter and most rabbit litter is made out of recycled newspaper (e.g. Yesterday's News brand cat & rabbit litter). Just keep your rabbit well-fed.

Second Answer: There are two problems with the first answer. First of all, anything that has poisonous ink on it is not safe to eat OR chew, because even by chewing, the ink will enter the rabbit's body and poison the rabbit.

That said, newspaper does NOT use poisonous ink, generally speaking. Regular newspaper is perfectly safe for rabbits to eat, and it's a very common thing to put in your rabbit's habitat: they like to shred it and sometimes eat it. This means plain, low-grade newsprint (not the thicker, glossy kind of paper you sometimes see on newspapers nowadays) printed in plain black ink (avoid the coloured pages).

Of course, newspaper is not food. Even if your rabbit eats it, you must consider it a toy. A starving rabbit might eat so much newspaper that they would get sick. A healthy rabbit that eats a proper diet is fine to nibble on newspaper. A healthy diet means lots and lots of hay (unlimited portions), and some pellets and fresh leafy greens daily.

See the related questions below for more info about keeping pet rabbits. See the link below for the source used to write this answer about newspaper.