RE: ? about cost of keeping goats

August 19, 2010

Hello Donna, Jo and All,

First thing, these are my opinions, you must deside for yourself.

Here is my take on cows vs goats.

The standard is 1 cow = 5 goats for land usage.

I choose goats, hands down. They are far easier to care for,

feed and tend and they will eat plant material that cows will ignore.

Therefore the land is improved by having goats "garden" for you.

The last thing my girls eat is grass and all my 'horse' neighbors

are envious of my pastures and want to borrow my crew. hehe

My goats (Alpines) are wonderful, sweet and charming animals.

I don't have to dry-off and rebreed every year as you have to with cows

and some breeds of goats. Sometimes it is hard to place all those kids.

The last time out, 3 out of the 8 does we bred, had tripplets!! We got only

2 bucklings out of those 9 kids. That would have been wonderful IF we

had wanted to increase the herd. In my case, not what I wanted.

I currently milk 3 does once a day and get more than 2 1/2 gallons

of milk/day. I know that is seems not very impressive but these girls

have been milked thru for OVER 4 years without freshening. That

amount of milk is more than enough for my household usage.

They do slack off thru the coldest part of winter but they pick right back

up come spring with it's fresh tastey weeds and aflalfa.

Their ages are 6, 6 and (guess) 12.

I breed for heavy, persistant milking and mothering ability.

I'm not a person who likes or wants to show.

You do not need to feed massive amounts of grain and in fact goats

do better if you use grain spairingly. Mine girls get grain (dry rolled barley)

and alfalfa pellets only while on the milk stand. You can cause problems

by over feeding grain. I also avoid products made with corn, beets, canola

and soy due to GMO and other issues (herbasides).

This rule is for us AND my goats.

Purchased alfalfa hay is questioned carefully about sprays and seed used.

Even molassas is banned from my house if it is made from sugar beets.

Read about them and read your labels carefully.

Again, these are my opinions.

There are many other points I could bring up but this email is long enough.

If any want to debate my opinions or have questions, please email me

directly so we don't clog the list.

to all I wish happy days,

Rae

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