Goat Feed Idea

CaliannG · #21 08/20/10, 05:23 PM

Some people are just like that. They kill their livestock, then they come up with ANOTHER bright idea, and kill more livestock. When people try to tell the person that something is a BAD idea, they shrug it off and do it anyway, resulting in more dead livestock.

If this guy wants to throw his money away and turn deaf whenever someone tries to advise him differently, then there is nothing any of us can do.

I feel very sorry for the goats, though. If they were in the hands of even the most inexperienced of us here, they'd likely be better off.

Laverne · #22 08/20/10, 09:05 PM

I'm going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. After reading the thread about silage for cattle he liked the idea. So he may do that for the cattle he has and not the goats.
From my own experience, goats are not for cheapskates.
Also for someone with pasture I think sheep would be better.

Pony · #23 08/21/10, 01:07 PM

Around here, there are no chemicals used on the sides of the road. It just gets mowed down. If we get to it before MO-DOT, it's great hay and the animals really like it.

Garbage? No... we see an occasional pop bottle, but no, there's really none of that around here, either. What does happen to land there, we pick up.

We certainly wouldn't make silage out of it, though. I love my goats, so why would I feed them that?

Haven · #24 08/21/10, 01:25 PM

In my area the city loads up pesticide sprayers in the beds of trucks and drives up and down the roads spraying huge clouds of it into the air for mosquitos. We saw them doing it outside of town on our semi rural road this year....uggg

The railroad that borders part of my land also dumps massive loads of some herbicide along the roads and tracks once a year - some strong concoction that perma kills everything it touches for a solid year...double aaarg.

Other than that, most of our roadsides are done by ODOT 1 or 2 times a year with sickle bars. (sp?)

Beef11 · #25 08/23/10, 11:06 PM

WOW! I would just like to thank everyone with the very helpful suggestions. I think the idea has merit but should be done with some discretion. I found some people who have done similar things and others who gave me new ideas. Yes Laverne I would use the bagged silage for cattle and not goats. The next question I have is why the personal attacks? If you don't agree with someones idea don't belittle or demean them. I had no idea that I would be personally attacked by the tyrants of the goat forum. To borrow a phrase "I guess some people are just like that".

To move on let me give you a small amount of insight. I got into goats a year ago by buying two Alpine nannies they both kidded a short time later and all kids were lost (as I was criticized for earlier). They all had white muscle disease. I should have not taken the word of the person I bought them from about their health program. I have since moved to a very thorough mineral program and have not lost another to white muscle since. The Blog referred to was actually pretty old and needs updated then you would be able to see the doelings I'm about to breed out of the same stock. I now have 24 or 25 goats (7 of which came from a dairy where they were fed a silage heavy ration) as well as a herd of beef cows and a couple Dairy cows. A few horses also call the place home. The small stock includes Chickens, Pigs, pigeons, Rabbits, Dogs, Cats, fish and tomorrow I'm going to pick out my sheep (6-10 ewes). Everything on the places has a role and must pull its own weight or their program will be cut. The goats have proven to be a useful and profitable enterprise. I'm always looking for ways to make them more useful and more profitable. I work off the farm a few days a week in the livestock field. I truly enjoy my work and it helps me build my little empire. I thank you for your constructive ideas and for sharing your experiences.

BKR

Laverne · #26 08/23/10, 11:40 PM

Please don't be discouraged by the negativity, we really all should be encouraging and positive. We are all here to learn and most of us have had a steep learning curve at times and shouldn't be quick to judge.

CaliannG · #27 08/26/10, 11:45 AM

FunnyRiverFarm told you that mold in silage can kill goats.

Alice told you all the nasty stuff on roadsides, and that it was not good goat feed.

Then you said that you'd watch for trash and that you still thought it would work "grandly".

~Sounded like you completely ignored the fact that bacteria and nasties from roadkill and road trash would *contaminate the grass*.

KimM warned you about chemicals and pollution, and then said she certainly wouldn't use it as a feed source.

I warned you about things that slosh out of vehicles as they go down the road, plus poisonous (to goats) plants being mixed in with the rest.

Alice even gave you a link to an extension article about the dangers of using roadside hay and forage.

motdaugrnds added that doing so was just inviting trouble.

Laverne gave you another link and warned you about the dangers of treating goats like cattle.

fitwind warned about leaking oil, antifreeze, and the dangers of small, glass shards being mixed in with the silage, again very dangerous to goats.

sammyd mentioned non-goat-friendly plants, and also mentioned that roadside ditches are a FAR cry from field or lawn clippings.

Then you said, "Other people do it and they don't have problems!" Which I had the SEVERE urge to reply with, "If other people were jumping off of a bridge, would you do it?" Instead I just told you to have fun.

Alice, finally loosing her patience, said that silage can be problematical for goats, and she'd go into the science of it but she already felt she was wasting her time typing.

Laverne said if you fed it to your cattle, but NOT your goats, it might work.

haphaz farm said you might want to consider listening to people instead of just stubbornly plowing on with an idea that everyone had already told you was bad, since you had already lost two batches of kids with your first goats. (That they died from white muscle disease because you took the word of the seller that the does were healthy does not, in any way, release you from the fact that you had dead goats through your own ignorance. After all, if you had more experience and knowledge, you would not have just taken the sellers word, and you would have known what to look for in healthy goats, now wouldn't you?)

Creamers told you, emphatically, that silage is NOT for goats. That death through mold poisoning was AWFUL. Creamers also expressed doubts about your listening ability.

motdaugrnds told you that no silage would be fed THERE!

morningstar told you it was a bad idea. And also mentioned you should look at your goat's diet.

RiverPines said it could be done on clean, open, feilds...a small bit at a time, and HAD to be eaten within 12 hours....but not to do it with toxic, roadside growth, and that it was a MUCH better idea to feed it to cows than to goats.

Then I mentioned that some people just WON'T listen to sound advice, and I got on you for stubbornness.

Laverne decided to give you the benefit, with the compassionate hope that after you had read everyone's posts, you'd be moved to turn the silage idea to your cows. She mentioned that sheep might be better for you as goats are not a cheap hobby.

Pony mentioned that she lived far enough out that her roadsides are pretty clean, but that she STILL wouldn't feed silage to her goats. Hay, yes; silage, never.

Haven mentioned in her area, roadsides are basically toxic waste dumps for herbicides, pesticides, other-cides. Also that such things are "uggg".

Then you come back on, all derriere-sore because I inferred that you were stubborn, not listening, and that I had simply dismissed you as someone who would go ahead with bad ideas when everyone was attempting to warn you away from them. You addressed Laverne that you would use the bagged silage for cattle, and not goats, in an attempt to infer that you weren't thinking of using it for goats anyway. (And, if that is truly the case, why did you post it on the GOAT forum, anyway?)

Then you attempted to say that your dead stock was not your fault, that the blog was old. (A year is "old"?) Also that you had a GREAT breeding program going now out of that same stock.

Lessee, 2 Alpines that kidded and you lost all babies a year ago. Then you say you have doelings out of that stock that you are about to breed? IF the Alpines were bred the following fall after loosing their kids (were you still milking them?), say, in October, you would have had March kids. Those kids will be 5 months old now. Are you really about to breed them? At 5 months? Or are you saying that you bred the original Alpines in spring and they are giving you fall doelings? How do you know?

Fourteen people told you about how it was a TERRIBLE idea to give goats roadside silage. Yet you ignored them and went blithely on....and NOW you are complaining that being pinged about your stubbornness was a personal attack?

~smiles sweetly~ My dear, you don't know what a personal attack *IS*. Go on up to the Homesteading Topics forum and start a thread on the merits of raw milk, so you can tell the difference between a personal attack and people simply judging you upon your repeated posts.

If someone trips over a jut on their step EVERY DAY, is it a personal attack to say, "John, are you just an idiot, lazy, or do you LIKE tripping every day? Why won't you fix the durn thing?"

So, Beef11, are you blind, can't read, stubborn, or do you just LIKE watching over a dozen folks repeat over and over that your GRAND idea is a bad one?

Oh, and by the way, I would not BUY goats that came from a place that fed heavy silage. The risk of bacterial problems and/or heavy parasite loads would be more than I would be willing to deal with. Many of us here do not have a super high opinion of the things that go on at dairies, we are trying to AVOID foods with high antibiotics, steroids, etc., which is one of the reasons why we grow our own. There are other reasons I would not buy from most dairies, too numerous to list here. (MOST dairies, not ALL. If Vicki were still in the dairy business, I'd buy a goat from her dairy any day of the week. However, Vicki is the Goat Guru and she is the one that pioneered most of the health practices we have today.)

I do apologize that your derriere got hurt.

PotBellyPigs · #28 08/26/10, 12:32 PM

Wow!
What more could be added?
Oh, I know.
Radiator coolant is poisonous and is likely to be found around road side ditches.
Now, I know, that these new coolants are no longer poisonous to animals, but how many years of broke radiator hoses, holes in radiators, and blown head gaskets has poured upon your road side ditches?
And these plants HAVE consumed these coolants through all these years, and NOW your goats are going to eat these plants?
I wouldn't want to consume that tainted meat or milk.
Why would you?
Why don't you grow a very large field of sweet corn, then cut the stocks @ the ground, then store in your barn for fodder?
Furthermore, my goats ALSO like cucumber, melon, summer squash, winter squash, apples, and pears.
All of these can be grown on your land to help you cut down on your pasture usage.
Hay is NOT that expensive(at least around here) at $25 for 700#.
You have a lot of options, beside poisonous plants.

KimM · #29 08/26/10, 01:31 PM

People can share and offer what knowledge and experiences they have with other people and even though I might not like or strongly disagree with the way some people decide to care for thier animals, there's not a whole lot that I or anyone else here can do about it so going into a screeching, emotional tirade is not going to help anything. If it works for him, well then good for him, and if he ends up with problems he has no one to blame but himself.
Personally, I've tried feeding mowed DRY grass - in small amounts - as a suppliment -to goats and ended up with enterotoxemia from it and so I'll not ever do it again.

Alice In TX/MO · #30 08/26/10, 03:06 PM

As a former teacher of Speech Communication and high school English , I did not find Calliann's response a screeching, emotional tirade.

I did find it to be a concise summary of evidence, as per a good debate. As I coached a state champion debate student, I feel qualified to recognize such.

KimM · #31 08/26/10, 03:45 PM

To each his own.

Slugmar · #32 08/26/10, 04:57 PM

Goats have been feed silage for a long time but the silage needs to be prepaired and done correctly or you could end up with problems in your herd. (just do a search in google for food silage for goats). But then again we feed alot of stuff to animals that they werent designed to eat. Maybe that human nature to change and develop things.

Personaly I have no idea what your road side is like and we have to defer to your judgment on that and people have told you what they think about the idea. If you think the idea will work then try it seperate acouple kids or animals out and experment and keep records.

Me personal I have enough area for my goats that they cant keep it mowed down all year and then if I need dry feed I have over 700 bales in the barn and where getting ready to cut again. But I also feed a protien to my goats, A buck may be 50% of your herd but your feed program effects your whole herd and with me the faster I can get the weathers up to 100lbs the faster I can get them shipped off to market.