How to get milkers to eat all they need during milking

[MamaDee]

How do you give enough time for milkers to eat everything they need during milking? If they don't finish, what do you do? We have four milkers and one always finishes and looks for more, but the rest don't. If they don't eat all the grain they're allotted won't milk production suffer? It takes a fair amount of time to milk all four--I hate to think we'd have to stand around after each one waiting for them to finish.

The one that mainly concerns me is our latest freshener. She's supposed to be getting 5 cups of grain a day (she milks 5 pounds a day right now). So she should get more alfalfa than that to balance it out. No way can she eat that in the time it takes to milk her. She eats the grain but not all the alfalfa. Then she starts stargazing if she gets to much grain (because she isn't eating enough alfalfa--when we first increased her grain after freshening she did this and I took it as a warning of thiamine dificiency). How do you make sure the milkers get all they need?

Dee

[Tracy in Idaho]

Am I right in assuming that you are trying to feed their alfalfa pellets on the milk stand with their grain? If so, that is the problem....there is no way they can eat the amount of pellets they need while they are milking -- those need to be fed off the stand.

I don't particularly "measure" the amount of grain that I feed. I know that sounds odd, but it is a strategy that has been very successful for me. As long as they are on the milk stand being milked, they are eating grain. Agatha just milked 30# on test --- she obviously takes a lot longer to milk out than a yearling who is only milking 5# -- so, she gets more time to eat and thus more grain than the yearling does. I milk 14 does in 45 minutes, so you can see that most of them aren't on the stand all that long, so it's not like they could chow a devastating amount of grain.

I feed my alfalfa hay and pellets free choice to all the milkers. I feel that forage is the important part of the diet -- more so than the grain. It's a rule at our house that the milkers are NEVER allowed to run out of hay.

There are as many ways to feed as there are goat owners, so by no means am I saying my way is the only way to do it -- it's just what has worked for me.

Tracy

[Alice In TX/MO]

Ditto what she said. Grain on the milk stand. Alfalfa pellets in a feeder in the pasture.

[MamaDee]

I agree with you both. That was the plan I had. I do feed alfalfa pellets with the grain....but I put the grain on top so they eat that first and then eat alfalfa if they run out of grain. But I knew they were not getting enough alfalfa that way. So I have been trying to give them alfalfa in their feeder in the pen. Are you guys doing free choice alfalfa? How did you get to that point?

I had heard that you gradually keeping adding more and more alfalfa until there is some left over next time you come down. I started that, but NEVER got to the point where there was any left over. So I never got to the free choice category. I kept buying more and more alfalfa bags and thinking I could never afford to buy enough to keep them happy. How much alfalfa pellets do you guys think you go through per goat a week? I was buying two bags a week for the 8 of them--four milkers, two doelings, 2 dry does. That's $26 a week just for alfalfa pellets.

Like I said in my post about money and dairy goats, I guess it just hurts more right now b/c we're not getting potential from most of them (bought them in milk and they're not milking alot). Perhaps it will be more cost effective once all our fresheners freshen HERE.

Dee

[DocM]

My does get their grain ration on the milkstand, no alfalfa pellets, that's given free choice. If I have a doe giving an even gallon (4-5 lbs AM and PM), she gets 1 lb of livestock pellets on the milkstand at each milking. My does stay in top condition with this amount of 12% all stock feed, 10 hrs of browse, and 3 lbs of alfalfa pellets daily. Your milage may vary, these are 110-120 lb lamancha does, first and second freshners. (we're several months into milking for this season so we're on the downgrade of production) Adjust as necessary for production, but a good rule of thumb is 2 lbs of hot feed per gallon a day of production (in addition to hay, browse, and or pellets). Hand milking, I finish about the same time the doe does, by machine, it finishes first and the doe stays there to finish up while I move buckets and such. If the doe is taking a long time to eat, you're probably giving her too much feed. If she needs just a little more time, milk her last, so she can stay on the stand and finish. I have two stands, so I just let the next one up and start while the first finishes. Mine don't get antsy standing on the milk stand for a few minutes without feed. I don't know too many does who can't gobble their grain ration in the time it takes to milk. I tried feeding a certain amount of pellets in a long hopper feeder but the big aggressive does ate it all and the little girls never got any. In a common pen holding my nine various age does ( 10 years down to 5 months), I have a dozen of those square hanging feeders placed around the edges, and in each I put a couple of pounds of pellets. The girls have to race around grabbing mouthfuls, but in the end, everybody is getting about the right amount for their size because the little ones are faster than the bigs ones, and there are more pans than goats. Whatever works, trial and error. I don't feed any hay at all, so I justify the cost of pellets because a) no waste and b) not buying hay.