Goats: Diet, Care and Maintenance

What could be healthier than goat milk? That’s right, only goat’s milk.

What conditions need to be created for livestock in order to ensure high and stable milk yields. The stall-pasture method is used to keep a herd of goats. With this method, goats spend 180 days in stalls and 185 days in pasture. It should be noted right away that the number of days may vary depending on the region.

In stalls, goats are kept without a leash; straw is used as bedding. During the day, if the weather permits, the animals are walked for up to 5 hours. On days when it is freezing outside, the walking time is up to two hours. But if the height of the snow cover is 10 centimeters, then the goats must be kept indoors. These walks are very important, as the metabolism improves and the quality of wool and fluff improves.

For feeding animals in winter, such feeds are used as – hay, straw, and chaff. Popular among goats are forages made from beans and cereals that were harvested during their flowering period, but, most importantly, measures must be taken to preserve them. The feed rate for adult animals is up to 3 kilograms, for kids up to 1 kg. The moisture content of the hay must be at least 17%. If the hay is still wet, then it is necessary to dry it. As already noted, the most popular food for goats is straw made from peas, beans, etc. In order for the animals to better absorb the straw, it is necessary to prepare it, that is, add calcium, saturate it with concentrates. Grinding is most often used. Pour the straw cut with warm, salted water. When preparing it, it is necessary to maintain the following proportion – 0.5 kg per 10 buckets of water. After that, the resulting mixture is kept in a box for several hours. But long-term storage of this mixture is not allowed.

The menu of a dairy goat consists of hay, useful additives, etc. For a dairy goat, the diet looks something like this – cereal hay, legumes, salt, and much more. By the way, many goat breeding specialists use brooms and autumn leaves as food additives. For the manufacture of a broom, birch, willow, mountain ash are used. But when using them, one must remember that frequent use of birch brooms can lead to kidney disease. And therefore they must be alternated, on average one goat has one broom per day.