Camelot Hills - Feeding the Goats
Like 3 Dislike 0 Published on 9 Dec 2014
As domesticated goats do not have the option to go out and find their own food because we fence them in, we must take the responsibility to make sure they get a balanced diet. Not only is this good for the goats health, it’s also good for you the farmer who will reap the benefits of a healthy milk goat. This video is about what and how we feed our dairy goats. I know the quality isn’t all that great, however I think I got the basic point across of what we do. There are all kinds of ways to do this and this is by no means the only way to do it. The best way is the way that suits you best on your farm for your needs. I hope my videos will get better with time as I’m new to all this.
Short transcript. We use several different types of feed. The first is textured sweet feed, we use Dumor Sweet Goat textured because it has all the nutrient content we are after in a sweet feed for our goats. I did not mention it in the video as I don't want to endorse any particular brand of feed. There are others out there that can do the same thing, this is just what we choose. We also make sure all the goats get plenty of alfalfa hay in any of the three forms available mentioned, standard bale, compressed bale and pellets. All are good for the sources of protein and nutrients however the standard bale is better for their rumen because it’s fibers are more intact. Also always keep fresh grass hay available. We like to offer round bales for free choice feeding and we also get good horse quality hay and feed them flakes of that in their hanging feeders. For info on a homemade hay feeder please see our other hay feeder tutorial on our page.
We also give Black Oil Sunflower Seed (BOSS), it is really good for their coats. Beet root pulp with molasses. We use the beet root to act act as a filler so the goats think they are getting more calories than they think they are…basically making them more ‘full’ so they aren’t so ravenous. We use the beet pulp as a weight gain/loss tool.
We also offer free choice minerals in both ground and block forms. Make sure you have plenty of water near their minerals so it encourages taking minerals…When you eat salt, it makes you thirsty right? So it is with the minerals for the goats.
Always make sure the goats have plenty of fresh clean water in whatever manner you can get it to them.
Goats can be fed in individual bowls or in a trough. I’ve seen some people throw the feed on the ground and the goats eat it that way. This is not a good idea as it’s unsanitary. Our goats won’t eat anything off the ground…they think they are too good for spilled food!
We take you into our barn where we tie all our goats up while they eat their individual bowls of feed so that we know who gets what and make sure there’s no ‘sharing’. This way we can monitor their intake of anything that’s not browse (ie. whatever they find in the pasture).
We’ll talk about medicines and other supplements we give them in another video, so stay tuned and subscribe to our channel. Visit us at www.camelothills.net for more info about our farm.
Thank you for taking the time to watch and see how we do things and hopefully the new videos to follow will be of better quality.
Remember, a healthy goat is a happy goat!
Have a Goat Day!