Feeding Goats – Proper Way To Help Productivity When Raising Goats For Milk Or Meat
Image by Ed Yourdon
(more details later, as time permits)
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On my way to dinner at a nearby sushi restaurant the other night, I stopped at a local playground to see if there was anything interesting to photograph. I found that a local community organizer, Darrin Dunn, had raised some contributions to provide uniform-style t-shirts for two competing teams of basketball players in the playground’s court, which has been named "Goat Courts."
Dunn is the CEO of the Earl Manigault Foundation, Inc., and you can reach him by phone at 832-660-1039 if you’d like to offer assistance; he doesn’t have a Website or email address at the moment. The foundation, and the basketball court, are named after the legendary Earl "the Goat" Manigault, who died in 1998 after playing professional basketball in France and Germany. You can learn more about Manigault, the basketball court, and the local tournaments in a July 10, 2009 Black Star News article titled Hope Dreams – Beyond Basketball, which was written by Mitch Ligon, whose chess-playing talents (in the same park) I showed in this Flickr photo.
Anyway, it was an interesting game, with lots of action. I took some 300 shots, and whittled it down to 30 keepers; I’ll upload 10 of them each day, while trying to juggle my other work demands…
Article by Ted Allen
Although goats are notoriously known to consume just about anything, farming productive animals means knowing precisely how you should go about feeding goats. The first thing you have to remember when it comes to feeding goats is that their nutritional needs are heavily dependent on their age, weight, stage of growth and their breeding cycle. This is especially true if you want to farm these animals for their milk or meat.
As an example, livestock owners provide a highly concentrated diet to fertile female goats (high producing does) about one month prior to their breeding. This is called flushing or egg flushing. This practice makes the does believe that food is abundant, and thereby produce more fertile eggs. After breeding, it is very likely that the female goats produce a healthy litter of 4 kids instead of the usual 1 or 2. At the same time, grains are removed from their diets during the last stage of their gestation (pregnancy). This is to avoid possible complications during kidding (birthing).
Generally, raising goats means providing regular sources of energy, minerals, proteins, vitamins and water. Among all this, water plays a critical part in the hoofed creatures’ diet. Clean drinking water must be accessible to the goats at all times. Otherwise, the animals tend to either become sickly or aggressive.
Energy means feeding goats grains and cereals. Most of the goat feeds available these days are formulated mixtures of grains, cereals and other carbohydrate based food stuff. However, these must be limited according to the goats’ nutritional needs to help prevent a common condition called mastitis or the infection of the udder. This is usually caused by a bad build-up of gas from the consumed grains and cereals.
When it comes to minerals, goats would need calcium, phosphorous and selenium in order to maintain their peak health. In the wild, goats usually consume these minerals through the grass and other plants they eat.
Sources of proteins should be regulated as well. Aside from the fact that adding a lot of proteins in the goats’ diet is not commercially viable, some animals tend to become picky with the food items they consume, favoring one type of protein source only. This could become a problem later on.
Lastly, these animals would need regular doses of Vitamins A, D, E and K in order to remain healthy. Fresh water is essential for a healthy goat. A good way to provide water is simply a bucket, refilled each day; or a trough, or even an automatic water station.
