Hi Shea, this is also going to tie in with your other post about a more natural diet. Just like beef cattle compared to dairy cattle, milking ability has alot to do with type. A beefy goat is not a good milker, a good milker would have a longer bone pattern, her hip bones would show, she would have hollows in her flanks, and if you shaved off the long hair she would be lean, a real athletic looking body with loose pliable skin rippling over muscle. She would not carry flesh over her ribs or on her thighs like a meat goat would. And the biggest thing that you can see in the difference of lets say a Nubian compared to a boer would be her long lean neck. Boers have much shorter meatier necks.
In checking for flesh in my goats I go for the ribs. I want my does to have a little flesh reserve over the ribs, I don't want ribs showing, but I also don't want soft fat (caused by excess grain) over the ribs or jigglying on the thighs of at the point of elbow when they walk.
Goat Chow and alfalfa hay is not an adequate diet for a goat. Yes they will live happy on it, they love molassas, is it good for them, no. Feed mills for years just like baby food manufactueres of old, make horse feeds and baby food for the eye of the mom. If it's sweet and sticky it must taste wonderful and they buy it, problem is horses have single stomachs. With all the molassas, this build acid in the ruminant stomach. They are actually less healthy than a goat who receives no grain and just alfalfa hay.
Your goats are also healtier appearing because they have been with your awhile. No matter if you are buying at auction or a top show animal she has a period of adjustment from stress.
When (hoping for) Y2K, we thought long and hard about how we were going to continue with our Nubians with a more natural life for them. We bought just as much grain for them in whole form to plant as we did for us. I walk through the woods/pasture with it and plant it so the girls have natural oats, barley, wheat to eat, because a doe not recieving grain during lactation is going to milk a whole lot more. This would have given me the opportunity to keep a handful of milkers, slowly butchering the rest for meat and keeping a small herd to raise meat for us.
When you move to a more natural diet off your place you are also going to deal 100% with the defficencies you have in your soil. Here the copper problems would have meant (without supplementation) that my goats hair coats would have looked awful (you can live with that) but that I would have also had to delvier 100% of the kids intensively, retained placentas and amniotic sacks so tough (selenium compounded) kids could simply not get out of them. More mastitis, more worms, more hoof problems.
But honestly I do think most folks should move to closer to a more natural diet for thier goats. Byproduct feed tags mean that everytime you are purchasing grain they are getting a change in feed. Not healthy for the goat. Most folks have no calcium in their goats feed. If you aren't feed alfalfa hay than feed alfalfa pellets, when you do you need little to no grain on the farm. The reliance on grain...why and what are you feed? Because few dry goats or grown unbred does ever need a bite of it, and your buck is only breeding a samll number of does a year they also don't need grain. Loving your goats to death is what we call it.
I know we all talk about this, the cringe you get when you go visit new customers farms, you are either going to walk into skinny emaciated goats, or pig fat goats with displaced obamassums that look like they are bred when not. Both are equally as disgusting as a goat breeder.
Are your goats producing twins and triplets year after year? Does she milk for you day in and day out the same amount of milk for as long as you ask her even at 10 months while bred? Than they are fine.
I keep more flesh on my show does because it helps them place better, does it help them milk better, no. My non show does are not kept in this same condition, they are just as tall, just as long, without the extra flesh, some milk more, some milk less. All have bones that show, because they are dairy goats.
As for dandruff. Give them awhile on your minerals to make the change. Food high in fat like BOSS (something else that is very easy to grow) will give them more gloss to their coats and give them healithier skin. If the flakiness was not at the previous home and now at yours, it could be from a bath and the detergent wasn't washed off, or simply from stress.
So the answer to your other question from me is yes I could raise goats off my place, who would milk and provide meat for my family. Would it give me enough to do what I do now, no. Would they be able to be showed successfully, no. So for right now I don't choose to do it, and use artifical means to do it
If goats had to be raised truly natural most folks who live in the south would not be able to have goats period. Vicki
