Milk production solely on forage?

[Oatbran]

Ok, so this is my first post here so bear with me.

My wife and I are finally in a position to buy our "homestead," and we'll be putting an offer in this week. Hopefully we get it. It's a small 1.7 acre place, but I think it will suit us nicely.

About 0.5 acre is totally overgrown with blackberries and brush that I want cleared out, and I'd like to establish a rotational grazing system with minimal inputs. So my long list of questions that hopefully can be answered is:

1) How much land do you need to rotationally graze, say, 2 goats? And what is best - pasture, forage (i.e. brush and blackberries), a mix? Will 2 be enough to eventually clear 0.5 acre? Is it possible for them to get all of their nutrition, especially copper, from natural forage?
2) What are the best options for temporary/movable fencing (to limit their area to clear out the brush and establish paddock rotation)?
3) There are a bunch of rhododendron along the property borders. How difficult is it to keep goats out of poisonous plants?
4) My philosophy is that animals on our homestead should do productive work, not just be pets. Does anyone have experience with goats as draft/pack animals? Can does give good milk on a forage only diet? What roles can they serve in a holistic environment?
5) Breed. I'm most interested in a multi-purpose breed, and the more purposes the better, IMO. I don't foresee a lot of meat-specific production, but I am interested in milk and/or fiber (in addition to blackberry eating). I want good-disposition animals, safe around young children, who are hardy, kid on their own, and can live on minimal inputs. Is that too much to ask? Any suggestions?

Sorry for the list. Hopefully those of you with more experience can help a newb. Thanks.

FYI, we're in Western Washington, just east of Everett.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

1) It depends upon what is on the property for goats to eat, how big the areas are, if dense woods like here, I could strip off every 50 feet and keep them in it for a week or more, and still not browse down the area. Optimum is to only have them eating with their heads up, goats are browsers not grazers, if you let them eat like they are supposed to, other than the stress of the move, as you move the goats to your place...worming, you could in theory never have to worm again.

You are in the pacific northwest where all the initial copper studies were done, other than a strip between south Texas up to Minnesota Michigan you are in the most copper defficenity area. No way can you improve plantings on your property when your soil is so depleted, or simply doesn't contain copper. You will have to bolus...and you want to bolus because bolusing gives you heightened immunity in your does, which want to be able to do holistic programs.

2) Not that you have to purchase from them but Premier1.com or google premier fencing, has wonderful net fence, that you can move by yourself...now it's harder in our dense woods, but it is strudy, indistructable, and so worth the cost over the long run. Now don't think for one second you can use it to keep bucks out of doe pens, sure as youngsters but not as older bucks. You may want to find someone with the breed of goats you are purchasing and either lease a buck, or purchase a young buck to use in the fall, not keeping him afterwards, selling him or eating him, after your girls either kid or are confirmed bred (biotracking.com).

3) I would start digging them up, perhaps contact a local nursery and see if they are interested in them...an arbor society in the next large town? My hay fed, alfalfa pellet fed, grain fed on the milkstand milkers, don't touch poisionous plants in the woods, but on forage only not sure hungry does would not eat them.

4). Truly only on forage I really don't know how you can do this with your winters. The girls will either be milking or pregnant during the winter, and for year round milk especially so. They can't live on frozen browse, even frosted browse here, you can tell there is lower nutrients in it because the girls really put the hay away after the first frost, even though there is tons of evergreen plants and trees in the woods.

You can expect alot less milk on forage only fed milkers, but they will milk, more than their kids need until weaning, unlikely, but once you wean the kids you will have at least that amount of milk.

Be careful who you buy your stock from...I would make sure they understood before you purchased that you are wanting these milkers to be forage fed only. It's no time to be purchasing really good milkers, you want to try to purchase from someone doing what you want with your goats. My girls are bred to produce alot of milk, they will sacrifice their body condition to make that milk and they will simply not make it through a pregnancy in which they have 3 or 4 kids and milk well, on forage alone, especially winter forage...which lacks in energy. Another thing you need to really look in is does your forage contain enough calcium for milkers. You might want to think about breeding kiko, they are good milkers for their breed, excellent moms. Kinders, which are Nubian/pygmy crosses, the meat part of the pygmy will give you substantially less milk...course not sure but I still think you would be dealing in multiple births which once again you can't do without energy.

5) Perhaps even Boer as long as you look into the teat structure, 2 function teats, otherwise it's simply a bear to milk.

Good luck with this. Would love to hear how you do and congrats on the property, we did exactly what you did almost 23 years ago. Vicki

[Oatbran]

Thanks for the response. If you did what we are doing 23 years ago, and you're still at it, then there's hope for us.

I checked out your website and was impressed by the effort that you go to to keep CL and CAE out of your herd.

Given your experience, do you find a lot more people like me joining the goat-herding ranks of late?

[betsy h.]

When the goats get the overgrown areas cleared, go back over them with good 'forbs'. Grazing folks word for 'forage' plants.

A good seed company is abseed.com- Adams-Brisco seed company in GA is one of the best sources for grazing mixes.

If you hyper-seed your property with really nutritious forage plants that throw lots of high quality seed as their output, you should have no problem. Supplement with things like alfalfa hay and other high quality grasses, you may find that feeding grain is not necessary- esp. if you have good Saanen genetics!<G>

A thing to remember when choosing seed for forage planting- a goat's forage and nutritional needs are more like a deer than a cow.

[billooo2]

Great advice from Vicki!!!

I will just add my thoughts....
1. There are formulas which can give you a ballpark idea. It all depends on what is growing there. For example, (when it is ready to put them out on pasture), measure a square 3' X3'. Then take hand clippers and clip all the grass in that square down to the height that goats will eat it. Dry it (carefully) in a microwave oven to get rid of the moisture.....and then weigh it. That will tell you how much 'dry matter' was in that square. Goats will eat about 4% of their body weight in dry matter every day. Then you can extrapolate how large of an area that they would need for 1, 2, or 3 days...whatever. The formula never works exactly because there are a lot of variables....rain, temperature. grasses may be different in different parts of the pasture. Rotational grazing is more of an art than a science.

Millk on forage only?? I sort of tried that......I was not impressed with the results. If you are serious about that.....you need to really learn about nutrition (more than I know). You should have samples of what they are eating analyzed, so that you know what they are getting and what they need. It may be possible, but it is much more involved. I was at a grazing confrence recently. Most of the attendees were cow farmers...and a lot of them doing "grass based dairying." They kept talking about how impartant it is to know what is in your soil. If it is not in the soil, then the plants won't have it. If the plants don't have it, then the animals won't get it. One of their challenges......with rotational grazing, they could get very high protein. But they struggled to get enough energy for the milk production to stay up.

I am thinking about raising some mangels this year to feed to the goats.....and see if I can cut back on the grain bill. One of the speakers at the confrence I went to said that they are feeding them to dairy cows in Europe. The cows are producing more milk and higher butterfat content when they are fed mangels.

A good resource for rotational grazing is called the Stockman Grass Farmer. I will try to paste a link to their web site:
http://www.stockmangrassfarmer.net/

I think that it is a noble effort, but it is actually, IMO, more work and much more difficult (to do it correctly), then to just buy some grain.

From my experience, a place not to try to skrimp is to get guality minerals and kelp. Since I did this, my goats have looked better, and I have had fewer problems with worms.

The "bottom line" is to watch the condition of the animals, and the milk production.
e
5. From what I have seen.......an animal that "can do everything"......usually does not do anything very well. My thought......if you want goats to contribute to the meat supply for the family.......use the milk from the goats to feed baby dairy bull calves, or to contribute to the food supply for a pig. The pig should be ready for slaughter by the time he is 6 months old. I have raised Jersy bull calves and slaughtered them at about 6 months of age. The volume of beef was not great, but it sure tasted delicious! (You will get more meat from the pig or the calf then you would have gotten from a goat.)

Just my thoughts..........

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Yes as many old broads who get fed up with the dairy goat association and move on, new folks take their place. I love new folks! New ideas, new ways of thinking about things. But why do you all feel the need to reinvent the wheel

My endeavor was never just about milk for the table, but a job on the farm that I wouldn't have to work off the farm. Milkers did it, and I am not going to milk 50 goats who browse, when I can milk 20 goats, feed them for production and get more milk with less labor. Although it sounds ideal, pastured goats, it is less milk, less condition on your does, more feet to trim, more kids, more manure, more everything.

Not a whole lot of 'natural' anything left in a high production dairy goat. Vicki

[Madfarmer]

Vicki gave you the best advice you'll probably get. It's a steep learning curve, but it's lots of fun. I'd just add emphasis on keeping your goats OUT of ALL the rhododendron species, including azaleas. Also Braken fern (fiddlehead) if you have it. I grew up in the Pacific NW, but I've been gone a long time so I'm out of touch with the native plant community. You might also have native cherry, which is another potential poison. But there's way more plant literature for that part of the country than here, so you can read up on what you have.

Madfarmer