Feeding and excercising market goats

[MaddieLynn]

Im picking up my goats in the beginning of August. So excited! Anyways, I've seen so much conflicting information about feeding and excercising! Use a treadmill, don't use a treadmill. Give feed and hay free choice, don't feed hay or they'll get a hay belly. Etc etc etc.

Can anyone tell me what is really true? Hay or no? What show feed is best? What's the best way to excercise?

Thanks!

[Cliff]

As close as you can get to how they'd live in nature is healthiest for them.

Are you planning to show these goats or just raise meat goats to sell? The show people do all kinds of unnatural stuff to get those goats looking the way they do. What do you mean by "show feed?"

If you are just raising meat goats, their "exercise" is them walking around in the pasture to feed themselves. The healthiest feed for them is browse but the best most of us can do most of the time is pasture forage/hay. Routine grain isn't really healthy, nutritionally it's like feeding children candy every day instead of vegetables. People who want a lot of milk out of their dairy goats use it for that but imo meat goats never need it. It's a huge expense and they just don't need it. They need all the good forage/hay they wish to consume. And a good free-choice loose goat mineral. And plenty of clean water.

eta - Rereading your op is sounds like you think you have to actively "do" a lot of things to have healthy goats. All you have to "do" is provide them as natural an environment as possible and let them be.

[MaddieLynn]

They are market goats. I'm showing them in our 4-H market goat class. I'll be selling them after the show.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Talk to your 4-H leader.

Here's a link. After you read all the info, you will probably know MORE than your 4 H leader.
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/4H/meatgoats/

[where I want to]

I have no personal experience but I did talk to people at the fair and they said the teenager who won consistantly actually took his goats jogging with him daily.
I think that putting an animal on a treadmill could easily become cruel as it is so easy to make the poor animal work while the lazy owner thinks every is just fine.
But if you have to exercise along with your goat, then I doubt either of you will suffer unduly.
The other option might be to have them on a steep hill where they climb naturally.
With showing, you always have to remember that some people seem to lose all sense of discretion in the heat of competition. And everyone who is not willing to abuse their animal in that way, has to be ready to let the winning go for the sake of the animal and their own self-worth.
I can guarentee that you will have many years of good memories and fun if you start by being aware of the trap of "anything to get ribbons."

BTW- we generally are a bunch of goat huggers here- I raise meat goats but I still hug on them a lot. My goal is to let them have the best life they can have, even if it will not be for years. My does also have a retirement plan.

[jennigrey]

MaddieLynn - many people raise market goats. That usually means some 50 Boer goats out on pasture with little human intervention. Raising them for 4-H to show them is very different and generally involves a lot of fussing with them.

[Kits&Kids]

Meat goats in 4-h are called market goats. some of the top goats here in colorado use a jump corse to build muscel through the whole body. Its a 100 foot runway built along a fence a few feet wide with poles about every 7-8 feet with hights from 10 to 16 feet high.Lots of people use dogs to run them up and down. My dd used the treadmill for three years before we learned this system. You will be rewarded. Dont waste your money on a LAMB chariot.

[Cliff]

I'm sorry but I just have to say poor goats Chased by dogs or put on a treadmill to make them look a certain way? Really?

Then they still have to go to slaughter? What is the point of all this?