Nutrition & Prevention

Proportions change a bit seasonally, but here are the core elements:

Weed Free Eastern Orchard horse hay

Chaffhaye NON-GMO Alfalfa

Haystack Naturals Special Blend & Timothy Grass Pellets

Standlee Organic Alfalfa Pellets & Timothy Grass Pellets

Scratch and Peck Organic Goat

Triple Crown Naturals Golden Ground Flax

Thorvin Organic Icelandic Kelp

Sweetlix Meat Maker Loose Mineral

Zin-Pro 40 Quality Llama Products

Baking Soda

I also give the girls Rainbow Light Pre-Natal vitamins, organic liquid Marine Based Cal-Mag...with seasonal organic nuts - pecans, almonds, & hazel nuts.

Hay Quality - Never tell a potential hay vendor you're looking for goat hay, there seems to be a general assumption that goats like weeds, or eat any old garbage. Hay should never be dusty or moldy. Pull handfuls of hay randomly out of bales and smell deeply - is is sweet? Does it smell like sunshine and fresh grass? Is it a nice uniform green color throughout, or is it faded yellow, or full of brown stems? We prefer top quality horse hay. Sport horses cost tens of thousands of dollars, so hay vendors are more attentive about quality offered to the owners of those animals - seek out the very best for your goats!

Nut & Seed Quality - The same idea is true of the organic nuts and seeds fed to your goats. Taste them yourself, are they "nutty" and oily with a rich flavor? Or dry, shriveled and tasteless? We've found a dramatic difference in black oil sunflower seed quality in particular. Look at the nutritional label closely too - we feed high fat, oily seeds, packed with nutrition and flavor. Never feed roasted, salted nuts and seeds, raw is best.

Feed Cost & Milk Production - Unfortunately, economics is the unvarnished dairy punchline. Top quality feed is expensive and time consuming to track down and shop for. Practically speaking, dairy goats need to produce a minimum volume per milking to be economically viable, however you use their milk. If a doe looks like a butterball producing very little milk, she's probably not a very efficient dairy goat who realistically belongs in a productive herd. For me, this works out to a bare bones economic minimum of 500 ml per milking, or 1000 ml per day, per goat that milks solid 10 month lactations. In our herd, 750 ml per milking, 1500 ml per day or more at peak lactation is much more desirable, but she still needs to maintain 500 ml per milking, or 1000 ml per day for the whole 10 months.

Deciphering Nigerian milk production data can be a little discouraging at times. Through trial and error, we realized some goats milked great for a few months, but decided they were up and done for the year shortly thereafter and just started packing on the pounds. Sometimes this was only 3 to 4 months into a lactation, for other goats it was 6 to 7 months into their lactation, fat as ticks with empty udders. My treasured keepers milk like a Timex keeps on ticking - they produce high butterfat, have a persistent will to milk & take real effort to dry off.

We found it's super helpful to look up individual lactation records on the CDCB website. This provides valuable test-by-test snapshots of each 305 day lactation. Quality dairy goats are well worth expensive feed, we feel it in the wellness of our bodies drinking goat milk daily. Our hair, skin and nails improved dramatically (shockingly, at 60+ years of age, my husband's bald spot is gone), our tummies felt much better, and strangely we rarely get sick anymore. Coincidence ...maybe ...maybe not?

Annual Health Testing - WADDL offers thorough, cost effective screening for Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus (CAE), Johne's Disease (aka Mycobacterium avium, MAP and Paratuberculosis), and Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL). These diseases are contagious and life threatening, test your herd annually and be aware of the presence of neighboring sheep and cows (including ponds/streams that might be subject to fecal contamination) as potential sources of infection as well. Have farm visitors wear clean rubber boots, and dip boots in a strong bleach/water (or Accel/water) solution in front of you before setting foot on your property. Quarantine new animals until their test results come back negative - remember your boots/clothes/hands could cross contaminate, so take the necessary precautions!

Parasite Control - Observe herd condition closely, put your hands on each goat feeling over shoulders, ribs, spine and pins. Familiarize yourself with FAMASHA testing, and consider regular fecal flotations as an additional precaution. We copper bolus the entire herd every 3-4 months and feed Perma-Guard amorphous fresh water Diatomaceous Earth. We feed DE once-a-day in feed rations, for one week per month, which I suspect may help reduce parasite loads mechanically as well.

Bucks & Wethers - Males will need a modified diet with restricted calcium intake to prevent urinary calculi from building up & eventually blocking their urethra.