Mixing feed

Originally Posted by o&itw

Animax is Purina's equivalent of Calf Manna.

If Soybean oil is used it has to be listed as soybean oil if soybean meal is used it has to be listed as soybean meal. Any locally mixed and bagged feed (that is sold by a mill and not custom made for a certain customer) is required to have a feed tag that lists the ingredients (at least in the US).

A person can sit down with a feeds book and a (weight) list of material and figure out the percentages of most any feed. It is more complicated, though, because there are more factors to consider than simply protein, carbohydrates and fat and fiber.

Feed mills now have computer programs that allow for the adjustments of ingredients for varying situations. For instance, if soybean meal gets to be substantially higher in cost than cotton seed meal, and the miller decides to use cotton seed meal in his feed, instead, he can adjust the mixture for the difference between the proteins in the two meals to keep the same protein %. This may be more complicated than it sounds as substituting a given ingredient effects vitamins, minerals, and certain amino acids as well.

There are ways to "cheat" which is how urea, melamine, animal fat or byproducts that shouldn't be used with certain animals, and other stuff gets into feed that really shouldn't be there.

I never had great luck mixing grains and pellets with smaller animals as they have the ability to ick out what they like. If each animal is fed individualy it works OK because the animal will eat the stuff they like less at a latter time. With a group of animals out of a trough or bunk style feeder, the animals higher on the hierarchy will eat the preffered things first, and the lower animals on the totem pole will gets what is left, giving both animals an unbalanced diet. That is one of the main reasons pelleted feeds were developed (the other is that it let the miller mix in finer ground or less tasty components that the animals would not normally eat).

Originally Posted by trnubian

Doug do you know the weights of each of the other ingredients? If the soybean you mentioned is indeed soy oil and you added 50 pounds of boss you could be possibly be feeding too much fat. Too much to can be hard on their rumens. I like to keep mine at 4% no higher than 5%.

I would personally feed kids seperate from adults. Meaning also bred kids that will be kidding as yearlings. The little guys simply will not get enough if fed with adults.

If you have a way to feed alfafa pellets separate from your grain I would do so. Alfalfa pellets are not a concentrate they are hay. Forage, fiber, a good source of protein. Growing kids, lactating and late bred does need more calcium and protein in their diet than they are going to get by just adding it to your grain ration.
Your hay sounds really good so your dry does shouldnt even need grain right now. It would be better for them not to have any if they are in good weight. Just hay and minerals.

Your bred doelings, any working bucklings, heavy bred does and milkers all need a little grain. But most importantly they need calcium and protein that is readily available to them in the safe form of alfalfa hay or pellets. I recommend at least 2 pounds a day of alfalfa for heavy bred does and milking does. Free choice is better. Free choice for kids and doe kids bred to kid as yearlings should have free choice from young kids to freshening. All this plus the minerals, baking soda, and grass hay. Unless you switch to alfalfa hay, then you won't need the grass.

All this and your goats should sparkle. Feeding like this is not cheap like you know it is not going to be. But it is what I have found works very well for me and several others.

Have fun with it!