04/05/07, 07:19 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 5,662
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Figure a ton of hay per goat per year. That's without any pasture. If you have good pasture half the year (with browse), you could cut that amount in half, but in your case I'd say buy the whole amount this year and see how much you actually use. That will help you judge for next year -- and if you have a good, dry place to store the hay, having a little extra on hand is a good thing.
It sounds like your field is about ideal for goats. If you can manage to do some degree of rotational grazing, you'll preserve the good qualities for the future. If animals are allowed free access to the whole area, they'll eat off, and keep eating off, their favorites. When that is gone, they'll move to the next favorite, and so on, until all that's left is yucky stuff they don't like, and which may not be good for them either.
What kind of hay is it? And how heavy are the bales? You want good alfalfa hay for a milking doe if you can get it. Depending on the weight of the bales, you will get from twenty (hundred pounders) to forty (fifty pounders) per ton. I'd prefer the fifty-pounders if I could get them -- they are much easier to handle than the hundred pounders. But nobody around here makes them anymore. I guess they figure that everyone either has heavy metal or strong young men to handle their hay! (Sorry, favorite rant of mine!)
As far as the pounds per day, figure a total of five to seven pounds of feed per day for most does, increasing the grain a bit if she's a heavy milker. Keep an eye on her condition. If she looks like she's losing weight, up the hay; if she's packing it on, cut the grain a bit. Feed grain according to how much milk she's giving (except that if you are feeding alfalfa hay, they need a little bit of grain to balance the calcium in the alfalfa, even when they aren't milking). A doe should get about a pound of grain a day if she's giving 4 lbs. of milk; add a pound of grain for each additional two pounds of milk. (I don't have to feed that much to my Kinder does, but the large breeds do need it.)
You probably already know this, but for future reference, in addition to hay and grain, the two most important 'feeds' for a goat are clean water and a good *goat* mineral, loose, not block. Make sure it's a goat mineral, not sheep or cow (horse is okay if you can't find goat).
Kathleen
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