what to feed goats

[Guest guest]

I agree that animals tend to do best when they eat what the Designer created

them to eat. Goats, however, are not grazers nor should they be fed lots of

grain products as that is not natural, either. They are browsers - like deer.

They like to eat up off the ground - vines, trees, bark, leaves, poison ivy,

pine needles, your roses, your garden, your blueberries.... well, you get the

picture. LOL! They don't care for grass hay too much but they LOVE alfalfa and

do very well on that (that's what we feed in the winter as they eat it better

than the grass hay). A mixed pasture hay can be real good for goats as it can

have weeds, etc. that the goats love. They love legumes - peas, beans, peanuts,

alfalfa, etc. Soybeans (ever notice the deer mobbing the soybean fields?). There

are lots of things you can plant in your garden that they love. We feed them our

cabbage plants, broccoli, etc. after we've cut the heads/florettes. Even sweet

potato vines - the sweet

potatoes will just make new vines so it doesn't hurt them at all to harvest

some and feed them to the goats. Our goats eat off the leaves and leave the

stems. You can eat the vines yourself, too. Strawberry plants. They don't seem

to like squash plants but they DO eat the squash, especially if you will cut it

up for them. Okra. When I snap green beans, I send all the *ends* left over to

the goats (I have about 10 gallons to snap today so the goats are going to get

some of that). Sunflower seeds, sorghum seed heads, any seed heads like that (a

neighborn used to have a sorghum mill and we would get his seed heads, spread

them on our metal barn roof to dry, then put them in the barn and feed them to

the goats - they loved them). Any greens like kale, spinach, beets, turnips,

etc. are loved by goats. When our bush beans are done, we pull the plants and

let the goats have them. They will eat turnips if you cut them up small enough.

They can't bite them like

cattle do. I bet they would eat beets, too, but I haven't tried that, yet.

Apples and apple trees - yum, goats love those. And PERSIMMONS! Our goats make a

trail to our persimmon tree every fall and they stand there just waiting for one

to fall! The cattle love them, too. And the berries on the poke salet - our's

come in with purple mouths and sides in the fall. They also love the plant - we

have far less poke sallet in our area thanks to the goats. Same for the

honeysuckle. They've wiped that out in a large area around here. And wild

muscadine grapes (or the ones growing in your garden!) - they love the plants

and grapes both. Melons and melon rinds - even banana peelings. Acorns - another

goat treat also loved by deer and cattle/horses/pigs. We have a huge oak tree in

our yard and the goats tank up on acorns every fall. They can get them from

other oaks on the place, too. They are very good for helping the goats to put on

weight for the winter. People

say the acorns will dry up the does but we haven't seen them do that with

our's. I'd rather fatten a pig/goat on acorns than corn. We stay away from corn.

We also plant annual ryegrass/wheat for fall/winter/spring pasturing. You really

need a no-till drill for putting the wheat in but if you hand broadcast it, some

of it will still come up. I hand broadcast the rye because it's so tiny that it

works that way - in fact, it prefers bare ground as other plant growth like

grass can keep it from germinating. The animals get some high protein pickings

and early spring grazing.

One thing that a goat won't eat - paw paws. Deer won't eat them, either. But the

fruit is an extremely nutritious food for people. Racoons love them, too.

Eating up off of the ground like this helps with parasite control and also

explains why they don't want to eat hay that falls on the ground. Now it's

" nasty " . They like paper labels because it's a TREE product, not because they

like to eat tin cans. For 30 years, our goats have had the run of several

hundred acres with lots of wild stuff to eat even during the winter. They get

minerals from the bark of trees (we also feed minerals). Our goats have had very

minimal problems - rarely do we have kidding problems, etc. and lots of our does

have lived up past their mid-teens and even bucks living into their teens. We

feed very minimal grain - not even to the ones we are going to butcher. The

milkers get a handful to reward them for getting on the milking stand but we are

working toward not feeding them any grain at all (and it is not unusual for our

mature does to be 2 gallon milkers). The people giving grain to their meat goats

are like those giving it to

their beef cattle - they like the extra fat in the meat and think that makes it

*better*. But our family does not - we butcher grassfed bulls so we can have the

lean burger. In fact, we just processed a bull and four adult buck goats - some

of the bull meat was mixed with the goat and made into sausage. Bull/goat

sausage - very lean but very good for you. :-) I don't use it in patties. I

mainly use it to season other dishes like beans or scrambled eggs.

We were also world known horse breeders (until the NAIS hit three years ago).

Like with our goats and cattle, we worked for 20 years to keep the horses as

close to their " design " as possible. We did not feed grain, we left foals on

dams as long as two years (some of the best grown off babies we've ever had),

foals were born outside in the pastures - with over 100 foals born here since

1988, we rarely saw one born, let alone assist with the birth - we had 100% LIVE

healthy foal birthrate and close to 100% with conception even with outside mares

coming in with reproductive issues. The vets couldn't believe it. We did not

want our horses slobbering fat especially coming out of the winter - and after a

lifetime of owning horses, we can say that we've never foundered one and never

had one colic. Never had one with strangles. Well, we've just never had sick

horses really. We controlled what came into our front gate (nothing left or came

in without a negative

coggins test even before we had a state law) figuring if only healthy animals

came in, then the ones here wouldn't be getting anything. Yes, we rode them

other places - even rode the Chisolm Trail in Oklahoma/Texas - but like with the

goats going to shows, we worked at keeping our animals away from the others as

much as possible. We never brought any sickness home with us.

And we do not vaccinate - not even our children! Healthy immune systems (and

minerals play a big part in that) work better. JMHO.

My own personal advice would be to use alfalfa hay before you use grain with

your goats. Our horses only got grass hay and pasture - no grain. Even our foals

growing up. We just had a 6 year old mare go to a new owner/trainer and the lady

was amazed at how well filled out the mare is (she's a Morab, not a Quarter

Horse) especially when we told her she's never had any grain, not even when she

was growing up. This lady told us that at first she thought the mare was just

very fat - but after she looked at her closer, she realized that this mare is

just well MUSCLED (she has good breeding behind her) with a tremendous

amount of heartgirth (like she should have). We do try to feed the best grass

hay we can get, not just any junk that's cheap. And we bale our own, too. And we

feed free choice in round bales so they are getting food more like grazing

constantly instead of big amounts of food once or twice a day. Their stomachs

are small and designed to

be taking in small amounts all day long, not a bunch all at once. I believe

this is what also leads to more colic/impaction with domestic horses.

The only time I've seen a goat bloat and die was at a county fair where some

people brought a grade milker and left a BUCKET of whole corn with her in her

pen for her FOOD. Of course, she bloated and died. They were treating her as if

she was a horse with colic - making her walk up and down the road by the barn,

just throwing her into more shock. They would not listen to us. That was really

awful. In years gone by, we've had cows bloat but this was when we were doing

commercial cattle on big wheat fields. We learned that if we brought the cattle

in at night and fed them straw/grass hay, we didn't have the bloat issues

anymore. Feeding a good grass hay instead of straw not only kept them from

bloating, but they put weight on even better (we would bring in semi-loads of

weaned calves for the winter to put on the wheat, then sell them to the feedlots

in Kansas). I used to ride a horse out just before dark to bring in the 100+

calves to the lots at night

even when I was 8 months pregnant (this was the section that was closest to the

house - other fields were miles away and the men dealt with those). I had to

drive them close to a mile to get them to the lots for the night but once they

learned the routine, they went pretty good - especially once I got them all out

of the creek bed (they wanted to spread out and drink) and up on the other side.

WAY off topic. :-)

With the goats, you understand that they have four stomachs for a reason - so

they can take lots of fiber and break it down into usable food that keeps them

healthy. Putting a bunch of grain into their digestive system is not natural or

healthy for them. Same for just about any other animal, as well.

JMHO. :-)

Anita in Arkansas

http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com

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