Terra do Milho

Category: Keeping Goats

  • What Feeding Goats Costs

    What Feeding Goats Costs

    Do you want to buy goats for your homestead or small scale farm? Do you wonder if it would be worth doing so and what it would cost you to feed goats?

    Well, here is how you know what feeding your goats would cost you.

    Feeding goats is the main cost factor of keeping goats.

    Sure, you will have to make some investments when you start keeping goats, like in making a goat house or putting up fencing but feeding goats will be the lasting expense. That is why it is important to look into it well.

    And guess what? There are even some possibilities to cut some of the costs, we will look into that as well.

    Let’s go and calculate how much feeding your goats will cost you first. After that I will show you some options how you can cut the costs.

    What does it cost to buy goat food?

    You might guess: it depends on where you are in the world. But no worries, we will get that clear for you.

    There are two types of food that you, very likely, will buy for your goats:

    1. A grain mix or pellets. You don’t need to use both of them but you can choose one of the two. Why you would use one or the other depends on things like, the price, the nutritional value or how natural you want to feed your goats.
    2. Hay.

    How much does a bag of goat food cost?

    In the Netherlands A bag of 25 kg (55 lb) organic goat food costs about 18€ (20 USD on 11/10/19).
    In Portugal we pay 10€ (11 USD on 11/10/19) for a 30 kg (66 lb) non organic pellets. Organic pellets are not available and have to be imported from Spain.

    In the USA it depends where you are and where you buy. I asked around in one of the Facebook groups I am a member of. Here is an indication of the moment (11/10/19):

    • Bags are 50 lb (23 kg)
    • Bought in a local shop or coop, non organic: Grain mix 15 USD/bag; Pellets 11-13 USD/bag; Local shop or coop organic: 30-35 USD/bag; Organic grain 27 USD/bag
    • Tractor supplies: non organic 15-17 USD/bag; organic 23-28 USD/bag
    • Runnings: non organic 15 USD/bag
    • Purina (from Purinamills) goat chow: 22 USD/bag

    The amounts of grain mix and pellets that you need to feed your goats are usually mentioned on the package.

    The costs that are given here are just an indication so you get a briefe idea. If you make a proper calculation it will be better to check the prices in your neighbourhood, as we will see further down.

    The costs of buying hay.

    It is very hard to give a standard price for hay. It does not only vary per country but very much per location as well. A neighbour might be selling hay for a good price to you, or the hay has to come from afar to a much higher cost.

    Whether you have to give your goats free available hay the whole year round, no matter what, is part of an ongoing dispute amongst goat keepers and even amongst researchers.

    We follow the recommendation from our vet to give our goats hay all year round. This is why: When goats eat something wrong or when there are sudden changes in their diet hay can save the goats.

    Goats also need long fibers for their digestive system and hay will provide this for them.

    what do goats eat and how their digestive system works

    What about Supplements?

    Grain mixes and pellets do not always cover all the goats needs. Goats also need minerals. A so called salt block or “licking brick” can be hung in their free range zone so they can freely lick the minerals that they need.

    Why not mixing your own goat’s food?

    Can I be totally honest with you? Mixing your own goat feed will take you into complicated tables and calculations.

    Collecting and mixing the different ingredients can also take space and time. In the end the product that you will feed your goats might not even be cheaper.

    So as a starter I would not recommend going there. Start simple and than when you have your goats system going, go look deeper into feeding details if you like. Than you could start mixing goat food yourself.

    If you can not resist to look into it: I put a link in the resources at the end of the blog.

    How to calculate what feeding goats will cost you? Step by step.

    Now you know that prices can vary, depending on where you live, let’s see how to make a calculation of what your goats would cost you in your area.

    Step 1: 6 tips for getting the right data together for making your calculation.

      • Check this out first: what and where are the agri-shops, local coops or agri-chains around you? Agri-shops are shops where you can buy things that are related to agricultural activities. Try to find them on the Internet or ask around. Do you see people with goats in your neighbourhood? Have a chat with them. Ask them where they get their goat food from. People who have goats usually like to chat with each other about goats. They can spend hours doing so. What is better than a goat keeping friend nearby?
      • Where can you buy hay? Ask at farmers and agri shops in your surroundings. Check for price and quality. Hay should be dry and not look or smell mouldy for the minimum. Farmers that make hay especially for their own cattle or other commercial farm animals, usually sell a good quality of hay, since it has to meet their production standards. Don’t forget to ask how much a hay bale costs and how much it weighs. You will need the weight of the hay bales later on, to calculate the costs. Make a choice what your best price/quality option is.
      • At the same time as you make your round for hay, find out about pellets or grain mixes. Check the amounts you will need for your goats on the packaging. It should be specified for dairy goats in milk, pregnant goats and goats that are not in milk and not pregnant. When it is not indicated on the package ask the shopkeeper, he will have the information.
      • Don’t forget to ask the shopkeeper for the ‘salt blocks’/’licking brick’ as well. If they don’t have it there might be an alternative way of adding minerals.
      • Take a notebook with you to write everything down. Prices, quality, location of the shops or farms. Take the distance and time that you have to travel for buying the goat food into account as well.

    Step 2: making your calculation.

    Now you have chosen what you want to buy and where you want to buy it, you can calculate what your goats will cost.

    I will guide you through the calculation and give you an example of what feeding goats on our farm costs based on our own situation.

    Are you ready? Let’s go for the next step.

    How to calculate hay costs.

    To know how much hay you have to buy you can use this simple calculator (click on the link): Livestock Winter Hay Needs – Hay Calculator

    What is the weight from a goat?

    goat breeds

    The amount of hay in the calculator depends on the weight of your goat. Since you might not know what a goat weighs I will give you some figures on goats weights so you can fill in the calculator.

    An adult Saanen type dairy goat weighs around 95 kg (209 lbs).

    A goat of a smaller breed like an Alpine goats weighs about 60 kg (135 lbs).

    When you already have a goat here is an easy way to find out what it weighs without using a scale (click on link): How to Calculate Sheep or Goat Weight

    Using the hay calculator

    Through the calculator you can find out how many hay bales you need. You will need to fill in the weight of the hay bales that you can buy.

    After that you can multiply the number of hay bales with the price per hay bale that you have found and written down in your notes.

    For example: On our farm we need to feed our 5 goats on hay for two month during the dry summer. During the winter month there is a lot of pasture available so the goats will hardly eat the hay, but we do give them free available hay.

    From filling in the calculator we learn that we will need 35 bales of hay for the dry month. A hay bale costs us 3.50€, so in a year we will spend 3.50€ x 35 = 122.50€ (136,51€ on 12/17/2019).

    In our case we also give the goats freely available hay during the green winter month which would add another 10 bales. This costs us an extra 35€.

    Which brings our total spending on hay to 157.50€ (174.51 USD on 12/21/2019)

    How to calculate grain mix or pellets costs? An example.

    Since our farm is located in Portugal, a bag of 30 kg (66 lbs) of pellet feed for goats costs me 10€ (11 USD).

    According to the information on the bag my goats needs 600 grams (1.3 lbs) per day when in milk. This means one goat will cost me 0.20€ a day during the milking times.

    The goat will produce milk during 10 month a year, from halve way of February to halve way of December, which comes down to 304 days. So feeding pellets to one goat during the milking period will cost me: 0.20€ x 304 days = 60.80€

    During the milking break  one goat gets halve a portion of pellets per day, 300 grams (0.65 lbs). This will cost 0.10€ a day.

    The milking break takes 2 month which is 60 days. So during the milking break the feeding of one goat will cost me 0.10€ x 60 days = 6€.

    So for the whole year I will spend 60.80€ + 6€ =66.80€ per goat.

    We have got 5 goats so in total I will spend 66.80€ x 5 = 334€ a year on buying pellets.

    Supplements

    As a supplement on the feed and the hay I use a a so called salt block licking brick it is cheap and easy and the goats can serve themselves. They like it a lot.

    I buy a salt block about one time a year, it costs about 10€.

    Total costs of feeding goats

    To feed my goats the year round I will spend:

    Hay, 157.50€

    Pellets, 334€

    Licking brick, 10€

    So the total costs of feeding my 5 goats will be: 501.50€ a year, which equals 41.79€ a month.

    Keep in mind that these are only the feeding costs, it does not include other costs for keeping goats. Other costs at my location are connected to the housing, fencing, some small stuff like buckets and laces and the vet.

    Feeding goats, cutting costs

    How to cut on feeding costs for your goats.

    Now you know what keeping goats will cost you, let’s look into how you can cut on the feeding costs.

    Here we go!

    Herd your goats

    This is the oldest way of keeping goats. And it costs hardly anything to feed them. The goats will collect their own food while taken out for a walk.

    Back in the days in our area a group of farmers would hire in a shepherd to herd their goats. Each farmer would buy some goats which would then be put together in one herd for the shepherd . The costs for the shepherd would be divided amongst the farmers. In return the farmers would get milk and meat to sustain their families. This way the costs for keeping goats were kept very low.

    How can you herd your goats to cut the costs?

    Herding goats for the whole day would take a lot of time and most of us don’t have that amount of time.

    Another thing that is needed is: free range wilderness, either your own or your neighbours. You can not walk your goats through an area with a lot of gardens. But even in such an area there can be options.

    Some options to herd without a lot of time or land.

    Although taking your goats out all day to vast areas of land surrounding you, might not be an option, you could still save feeding costs by taking them out for one or two hours a day.

    Maybe you have a son or daughter that loves to take them out after school together with some friends. Or maybe someone else in the family who wants to save some money on the gym and take the goats for a good walk every day.

    Land wise: There might be a paddock or piece of wild land fenced in down the road where you could take the goats. Of course you will have to check first with the owner if it’s alright to take your goats there.

    Just another idea….During the winter month, that is when the rain falls in our climate, we herd our goats through our orchard. Most trees have no leaves. The goats are not interested in the leafless trees but they will eat all the upcoming weeds.

    Cutting costs on feeding goats

    A Paddock system

    When you have a piece of land surrounding you, you can fence it in and divide it into sub areas. Each area can be fenced in so you can rotate the goats through the areas.

    The areas do not need to be grass fields. Goats love to eat vines, shrubs and trees and it is very healthy for them too.

    How do you figure out what size of paddock system you will need?

    It might seem a bit a sidetrack to talk about the size of a paddock system here, but in order to know whether having your goats in your paddock system is an option for you, I will shortly go there.

    The size of the paddocks that you need will depend on things like number of goats, soil fertility and annual rainfall.

    Let me show you how extreme the difference can be:

        • In Holland, where we originally come from, the soil fertility is very high. Above that there is a lot of annual rainfall. When you live in an area with the same conditions you can keep 10-15 goats on a hectare of land. With the same hectare you can feed your goats young offspring. It will also provide you enough space to take hay from the land for the winter month.
        • Here in the south of Portugal where we live now, we can barely keep 5 goats on a hectare of steep mountain side. Keeping their offspring with them already is too much for the shrubs to regrow let alone to use the same hectare for growing hay.

    Conclusion: when you are living in a place with fertile soils and substantial rainfall, you can easily run a paddock system for your goats with less than a hectares. In other areas you will have to slowly figure out how much of an area you need. Either by trial and error or by asking people around you with goats.

    How can you save feeding costs with a paddock system?

    When you give your goats free available hay, like we do, you immediately notice that they use less hay when their free range area is getting green during the winter rains. The goats eat far less hay. This way we will need to buy les hay.

    The other thing is that they stop finishing their daily portions of grain mix that I give them. I can almost cut the amount down by halve.

    Mind you, some goats will gobble their feed down anyway regardless whether they need it or not. In which case you can manage their food intake by a tool that is called body condition scoring. Body condition scoring is a good tool to manage how much you have to feed your goats. Check this link if you want to know more about it: Body Condition Scoring For Dairy Goats, Made Easy.

    Combining herding goats with a paddock system.

    Because of our goats free range area getting green, and because of two hours of herding we do with our goats, we can cut down our costs on hay and grain mix substantially.

    Yet another way of cutting costs: bring greens to your goats.

    During spring we clear our orchard terraces. Out comes: a lot of pruned branches, cut back shrubs and cut grass with a lot of herbs in it. The goats love it all.

    Bringing greens to your goats also provides them with food, so it will save you buying food. At ours it cuts the costs of buying hay.

    Caution, caution, caution with garden clippings

    When you are bringing your goats greens from your garden, there is some caution you have to take with using garden clippings:

        • Don’t give the wrong garden clippings to your goats. Many ornamental plants are poisonous for goats. Especially when it is the only thing the goats eat. They can easily get an overdose of some poisonous plant.
        • Goats can also die when given too many grass clippings. A few handfuls mixed in with other things is okay, but giving them all the clippings of your lawn can be dangerous for them.

    Keep your goats for free: Milk your goats and make cheese or other goat products

    Yes, it’s true! By milking your goats and making cheese you can have your goats and home produced milk and cheese for free.

    How? By producing your own milk and cheese for your household you can save money on buying it. When you sell part of the milk and cheese you can get some income to cover all the costs that you have for your goats. This way you can keep your goats for free and have fresh milk and cheese as a bonus!

    Other goat products you can use and sell

    Here are some more ideas:

        • Make soap based on goats milk.
        • Breed for goats meat, eat it and sell it.
        • You can make candies like fudge or toffee, based on goats milk.
        • The whey, which is a by product of cheese making can be used for making drinks.

    By using and selling goats products you can either save on your household budget or earn some money to cover the costs on keeping your goats.

    If you want to sell goat products check the local regulations on selling animal products.

    Resources:

    Body Condition Scoring For Dairy Goats, Made Easy  This blog will explain how you can manage the amount you feed your goats by Body Condition Scoring.

    Feeding Goats, Some Things You Didn’t Know  This blog will tell you about what goats eat and how their digestive system works.

    What Not To Feed Goats To Avoid Accidents  Here you will find information about what not to feed your goats and how you can find out which plants are poisonous for your goats.

    Livestock Winter Hay Needs – Hay Calculator   An easy calculator to calculate the quantity of hay you need per year. You can also use it when you need hay over the summer. By the way, we do not sell these company’s tools, it is just a very practical calculator that we use.

    How to Calculate Sheep or Goat Weight  This shows you how to calculate the weight of a goat without having to use scales. A practical tool that is commonly used, described on the site of Washington state University. 

    The Langston Interactive Nutrient Calculator   This is the most simplified and best calculator I could find for you. It’s from the American Institute for goat research at Langston University in Oklahoma.

    Useful Facebook groups were you can meet other goat keepers, you will have to become a member: Goats and Goat Lovers and Homesteading and Sustainability.

    Infograf

    Infograf What feeding goats costs

  • What Not to Feed Goats to Avoid Accidents

    What Not to Feed Goats to Avoid Accidents

    Where does the myth that goats can eat anything come from? And does that also mean that you can feed goats anything?

    Fact is that goats are not only picky, but goats can also eat wrong things like plastic, chicken food and poisonous plants.

    Don’t you believe me?

    You will only need to check the fora on the internet to know what people’s goats have eaten that they should not have eaten.

    In this blog I will give you a complete deal of tips on how you can prevent feeding accidents for your goats. So after reading this blog you will know how to prevent these accidents from happening. This will save you a lot of time and trouble in keeping your goats.

    Goats have an individual taste.

    Goats have an individual taste and are a bit peculiar in what they eat considering wrong things.

    Our goat Bianca eats black agricultural plastic when she gets the chance. None of our other goats are interested in the same plastic. Our buck Putin loved electric wires, luckily he was the only one on the homestead. Don’t worry, he is still alive, we sold him after he had done his job well.

    Not all goats will eat things they should not eat. They might also not eat wrong things for a while and then suddenly pick up this bad habit. So better be safe than sorry and prevent your goats from eating wrong things.

    Cutting through the 3 most dangerous myths on goats eating habits.

    Let’s first start to cut through some of the 3 most common myths about goats eating habits. Then we will look deeper into how to prevent goats eating the wrong things.

    Why are these myths dangerous? Because it is very misleading and can lead to accidents. Being aware of the dangers of these myths you can avoid accidents and a lot of trouble with your goats.

    Myth number 1: Goats can eat anything

    On the contrary: goats are very picky.
    You can clearly see this when you see goats foraging. They eat something here, then walk some steps and take a few bites there. They would not start at one end of the field and then work their way through the field to the other end.

    In different times of the year they will also eat different things.

    When feeding your goats they will get used to the feed you are giving them. After that it is not always easy to change the brand of the goat feed.

    Why are goats so picky? It has a good reason.

    Goats have a very sensitive digestive system that needs to stay in balance and does not take sudden changes . For that they have to be picky.

    So when you are feeding your goats you can not just give them anything, you will have to be careful because of their sensitive digestive system.

    Changing your goats food suddenly or giving your goats food that is not meant for them can be live threatening since their sensitive system might not take it. That is why this is a dangerous myth.

    Myth number 2: Goats will not eat what is not good for them.

    Yes, goats are picky for a reason. But does that mean they always pick what is best for them?

    Here on the Homestead we do eat a lot of healthy stuff, you probably do to. But man, I really like those sweet cupcakes from the supermarket and I find it hard not to eat them. Or the nice chocolate pralines from the chocolate shop. They are so good. Do you recognise that?

    It’s a bit the same for goats. They might not go for cupcakes (although some might…), but they do not always pick out the things that are best for them to eat. This can be cupcakes or plastic or poisonous plants with a sweet taste or many other things.

    When goats eat to much of something that is bad for them it will disrupt the balance in their digestive system and can therefore be dangerous for them.

    Myth number 3: Goats will never poison themselves, because they know what plants are poisonous.

    The way goats forage can be misleading to us considering poisonous plants for goats.

    When plants are poisonous for goats it does not mean they will drop dead when they take a bite. Not all plants are equally toxic, the goat needs to eat a certain amount of a certain plant to get poisoned.

    When goats are foraging they take a bite here and a bite there, including bites from plants that are poisonous to them. But because they forage the way they do, they will not eat a lethal dose.

    It is only when poisonous plants are the only thing out there to eat for them when they get poisoned. This can also happen when goats get clippings served from a poisonous plant. There is a chance that they will eat it and get very sick or even die.

    The misleading thing is that one might think goats will eat a certain poisonous plant because one sees them eating it. But then in the end it is not edible in larger quantities.

    Examples of these plants are: azaleas in general especially rododendrons.

    Then why do goats avoid eating plants that are poisonous plants for them?

    Like for example foxglove?

    Poisonous for goats

    Goats do not have a mysterious sense for knowing what plants are poisonous for them. They smell and taste plants and then they judge whether they like to eat the plant or not.

    Plants that do not want to be eaten and eliminated by the goats have a taste or smell the goats don’t like. Some plants go even a step further and make the goats sick if they get eaten by goats. And if the goats never the less keep on eating it, the goats will die.

    Foxglove has a bad taste for goats. If you have ever seen a goat taking a bite of a foxglove leave you will have seen that it spits it out strait away. This is because the foxglove warned the goat: ‘hey I warn you! Do not eat me, I taste bad’. Even so bad that the goat will never taste it again.

    Plants that do not warn goats that they are poisonous are e.g. azaleas (there might be others in your region). That is when the goats misjudge and eat it.

    Still when there is lots around the way they forage will save them. But when e.g. the azaleas would be the only plant around or would be served to them, they would take a dose that would make them sick or even kill them.

    That is how goats can poison themselves.

    How to prevent accidents feeding your goats

    As a rule of thumb: You have to be careful and keep the non edible things away from the goats until you are sure no one in the goat family eats or drinks it.

    Even then be watchful. When goat kids grow up or new goats are added to the herd they will eat what the older ones eat. But that does not mean they will not eat what the older ones don’t eat. So don’t think the job is done when your herd does not eat bad things when new goats are added to the herd…

    Let me show you how to avoid feeding related troubles with goats to start with.

    In any case: make sure your goats have fresh water and hay available all the time.

    Fresh water and hay are not only the basic food necessities, they can also help in case of poisoning.

    By drinking lots of water the goat can sometimes neutralise a light poisoning.

    Hay is for goats what brown rice is for humans. The fact that brown rise is a starch is not the important part in this case, what is is that It stabilises our digestive system when something is wrong. That is what hay does for goats, it stabilises their system. When something is wrong there is a good chance that hay will solve the problem.

    Do not change the goats feed from one day to another. It can be lethal to goats.

    Why? Because their system can’t deal with it. As you have learned earlier in our blog “Feeding goats, things you didn’t know.”,  make link goats used to eat what the seasons would bring. Since the seasons gradually change from one into the other the diet of the goats would only slowly and gradually change as well.

    what do goats eat and how their digestive system worksThe millions of bacteria in the goats stomach that help the goats to digest their food are not just one type of bacteria. There are more than one type of bacteria present in their stomach at any moment. Some types would be good at digesting grass, others in digesting grains. When goats eat only grass, the grass digesting bacteria will be the fast majority and if the goats would only eat grains the grain digesting bacteria are in the fast majority.

    So what would happen if a goat that has only been fed on grass suddenly gets grains? It will not be able to digest the grain. Their digestive system will get into serious trouble. So much trouble that the goat can die from it.

    Hey helps as a safeguard

    Here is where the hay can help with the problem. When goats have hay available all the time it will be a substantial part of their diet.

    In that case they would not only eat grass, but hay and grass. If you then change the grass for grain there is still the hay in the food that is the same. Still it is better not to make even this change from one day to the other.

    How to change your goats feed safely

    The way to change feed is to always do it gradually. Mix in some of the new food with the previous food, then every day make the mix with a little more new food leaving out a bit more of the previous food. After a week or so the previous food will be replaced with the new food.

    When your goats are living in a barn during the winter month and you feed them on hay and feed mix, it can be tricky to put them out into the green in spring. If the change is to quick they might get diarrhoea. It would be best to only let them eat the greens for a short time at the beginning. You can let them eat the greens a little longer every day until their system gets used to it again.

    Bottom line is: never change a goat’s diet to quick.

    Another thing: be careful making your own hay

    Imagine what it would be like to be on your own field on your Homestead and harvest your own hay. Then dry it during those view dry days in the wet summer, turning it over and over with the whole family helping.

    Smack! You suddenly realise that there could be poisonous plants packed into the hay….

    And the trouble is the goats will not recognise the poisonous plants in the hay. Remember?  Goats select what they eat with their smell and taste. Some dried plants lose their smell and taste. So the goats will not recognise them any more as poisonous.

    How to make proper hay

    The solution is simple but can be very labour intensive: you will have to check the field and if you find poisonous plants you will have to remove them before making hay.

    After having done this for some years poisonous plants that seed themselves like Foxglove will not come back.

    Plants that are propagating from their roots like Arum and Bracken are much harder to remove. You probably have to plough the field to get rid of them.

    You might be lucky though and have no poisonous plants in your field….bit better check it.

    Maybe it is a bit annoying to you that there is so much to know about what goats eat and so much to read about.

    But see it like this: after you have read it all you are sure you will be doing the right thing with your goats. And avoiding trouble makes life with goats a lot easier, believe me.

    What plants are poisonous for goats?

    The poisonous plants that are growing in your area can be totally different ones then the ones in my area. So be aware that any list given can be incomplete.

    So how do you find out what’s poisonous?

    Here are some tips based on how I deal with this:

    • Research on all plants that are poisonous for humans whether they are poisonous for goats. I know goats can handle more than humans, but it gives me an indication.
    • Mistrust all ornamental garden plant that are used for hedges and as climbers. So before I give garden clippings of those plant to my goats I research them first on toxicity.
    • When you thin out herbal plants from your ornamental garden always research on them before you give them to your goats.
    • Talk to goat keepers in the neighbourhood and ask them what is poisonous. But keep in mind that, unless their family has been raising goats for generations, people might not know everything. Some goat keepers might be relative newcomers like you are.
    What not to feed your goats
    Rododendron, lethal clippings for goats.

    How to research on poisonous plants?

    There are some apps available that will help you. You take a picture and the app tells you which plant you are dealing with. Once you have the Latin name of a plant you can research in details on the internet.

    A bit more complicated but still good is a plant guide. Look up the Latin name and you can do further research.

    Check on one of the beautiful goats peoples Facebook groups and ask goat keepers what they are using. People are very helpful on these platforms.

    Important extra warnings what not to feed your goats

    • Since this is poisoned goats reason number one I can’t stress it enough: don’t give the wrong garden clippings to your goat.
    • Don’t give goats too many flowers to eat. It is okay when the flowers are in a field where they brows, but when you give them a bunch of flowers in their feeder they will most likely get a bad diarrhoea or even get bloat.
    • You can give your goats grains and grain mixes (only the ones for goat and sheep), but never give them weet. When you give your goats weet there is a bigger risk that they get bloat. Bloat means that they get air trapped in their system. If you have ever had that yourself, you know it is far from pleasant. For goats the problem can be lethal. Grains that cause no problems when given in moderation are: barley and outs.
    • In some areas in the world copper deficiency is an issue, contact your local vet to ask if you are in such an area and what is best to do. Be cautious of self medicating, in this case self medicating can also harm your goats if not applied right.
    • Don’t give goats mixes or pallets that are not for goats, never ever. Especially no chicken feeds. It will cause bad diarrhoea.
    • Try to use only plants in your garden that goats can eat. Some goats are master escapists and they will end up in your garden at some point. Pro’s of edible plants in your garden for goats is also that you can give them the clippings as a treat.
    • Never ever give goats meat, candies, sweets and similar goodies that are meant for humans (and not good for them either). It will destroy the balance in their sensitive digestive system for sure.

    So that’s it for now.

    I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and to see you again.

    Subscribe to this blog or connect to our Facebook or Instagram to stay posted.

    Links for more information about goats eating habits and their digestive system: feeding goats, things you didn’t know

    Infograf

    What goats do not eat

    Resources

    Het graasgedrag van de landgeit in Nederland, en verkenning (Grazing habit of the country goats in the Netherlands, and reconnaissance) Anneke de Vries & Nick van Eekeren,© [2007] Louis Bolk Instituut, the Netherlands.

    Goat health – copper deficiency  NSW Department of Primary Industries, Australia, September 2017.

     

  • Feeding Goats, Some Things You Didn’t Know.

    Feeding Goats, Some Things You Didn’t Know.

    Can you give me the name of a country were there are no goats?

    No? Why not? Because they are very flexible in their diet.
    Does that mean goats eat everything? No, definitely not.
    How does that work?
    Let’s look into goats natural eating habits and how their digestive system works.
    Why would we look into that, what does that have to do with feeding goats? Because knowing about goats eating habits and their digestive system means that you will easily understand what to feed and not feed your goats.

    Where do goats eating habits come from?

    Wouldn’t it be great if we would be able to travel back in time and see how goats used to live in their natural environment?

    Just imagine a world in which small numbers of humans live. Many grazers were inhabiting the world, amongst them goats. The goats lived everywhere on our planet, from the poles to the tropics. Roaming around on steppes, on open spaces between the dense rain forest, on freezing mountaintops and many more places.

    What do goats eat naturally?

    The diet of the goats would change with the seasons. They are flexible in what they eat so they would have had a good chance of surviving.

    They would eat shrubs, herbs, grass, trees, vines, bark, twigs, fallen leaves, berries, fruit, pods (like alfarroba), aceorns, chestnuts and much more.

    Goats would find something to eat in any season.

    In this area where we live, around the Mediterranean they would eat fresh herbs, grasses and shrubs shoots in the wet and mild winters.

    During the long dry summers they would have to put more effort in gathering their food. They would have to walk up to 9 km a day to fill their stomachs and eat seeds, bark from trees, twigs, bushes, hay and other dry forage.

    Can you picture what they would have eaten where you live? In summer and in winter?

    Goats have to watch out!

    Since there were predators all over the place, they would not eat all day.

    During the hours of sunrise and sunset they will go quickly into the open fields to forage as much as they can, then when the sun rises more up, the goats would withdraw into the wood edges to hide and ruminate their food.

    At night they would do the same, they would spend the nights hidden in the shrubby wood edges and not make a sound. Silently ruminating.

    Hang on…what is ruminate?

    The way the goats digestive system works is perfect to quickly eat as much as possible and then after they have filled their stomach draw back into the scrubs and start ruminating.

    The digestive system of a goat: Goats are ruminants and they ruminate.

    Goats have a stomach that has 4 parts. The first part of their stomach, they can fill with very roughly chewed material. This way they can eat large quantities in a very short time.

    This first part of the stomach pushes the food plus a load of saliva back up into their mouth. Then the goats take their time chewing it properly. This is called ruminating.

    Digestive system goats

    After that the well chewed food is swallowed again and digested by millions of microbes: bacteria, fungus and yeasts that live in the second part of the stomach.

    The red and blue arrows in the drawing show the route that the food is taking inside the goat.

    The microbes live in a symbiosis with the goat: the goat provides them with raw food material that is well chewed and the microbes provide the goat with their waste which is digestible for the goat.

    Feeding goats means feeding a sensitive ecosystem

    In the goat’s stomach the bacteria, fungi and yeasts form a sensitive ecosystem that needs to be treated with care. The numbers of the different bacteria, fungi and yeasts colonies are carefully balanced. A sudden change in food for the goat would cause an imbalance that can make the goat ill because the microbes would not be able to deal with it. An imbalance can even kill a goat when it gets too extreme.

    So when you are feeding your goat, you are not only feeding your goat, but also this sensitive ecosystem. You will need to feed this ecosystem with care.

    To maintain this ecosystem you will need to give your goats food with enough long fibers, which are mainly present in hay and grasses. The goats can only be fed grains (starch) in moderation. Greens of all sorts will provide vitamins and minerals to the goats as well.

    Do not feed goats food that is not suitable for goats. The microbes will not be able to handle it. Giving goats feed that is for sheep is still acceptable, but it is the only one.

    what not to feed goatsHay can be given at all times and can be freely available. So can greens, when goats are used to them. If goats did not eat greens for a long time, like in winter, you will have to start with small portions. If not you will disrupt the ecosystem in their stomach.

    Changing food for goats is a sensitive story. You will have to change their food gradually so the microbes can adjust.

    What happens after the food has been in the second compartment of the stomach.

    After being in the second part of the stomach, the food is then digested in two more steps in the third and fourth part of the stomach. After that is is taken through the intestines where nutrition is taken out of the digested food. What is left goes out at the other end, where we can see it again as the little poop pellets that drop out of the goat.

    When their poop comes out in little loose pellets this means the digestive system is working as it should. When it is sticking together or comes out in the form of diarrhea there might be a too sudden change of food or the food might be too rich. It can also have happened that a goat has eaten something that it should not have eaten, goats do make mistakes.

    Do goats just eat anything they can get?

    Oh, no!

    Despite of the quick eating the goats would still be picky, they would first explore the field they are in, sniffing the food that they are going to eat. Thinking: “do I like this? Is it mouldy? If it’s mouldy I will not eat it. Does it taste wrong? I will spit it out”.

    After some exploring they will go ahead and eat, with confidence, as much of the good stuff  they found.

    Goats can also get too picky, so picky that they do not meet their nutritional needs by eating. Sometimes they can also pick out things that are not so good for them. Pretty much like we humans do, by eating too many muffins and not eating enough fruit and vegetables.

    Goats have a preference for woody plants, but they do well on grasses, herbs and shrubs as well. They especially love the fresh parts of the plants.

    Watch the goats picking and browsing their food in the video below.

     

    What do goats eat when we keep them?

    When we keep goats we usually contain them and controle their food by feeding them. That is fine.

    Goats have preference for variety in their diet, this will keep them healthy. This does not mean that you will have unhealthy goats when you keep them and controle their food. They are after all flexible in their diet too.

    The cooperation between man and goats.

    Long time ago humans and goats decided to work together. It was a mutual interest.

    Goats would be provided with safety, shelter and food and humans would also have more food security because the goats offered them their milk and offspring.

    Feeding goats like a shepherd.

    For long shepherds would walk around with goats and still today goats are kept in that way.

    Shepherds would take the goats through the landscape for days. Maintaining the landscape and feeding the goats at the same time. Whether the landscape was poor or rich, what was there was all that the goats ate.

    Taking goats around like a shepherd does not always mean that the goats will get everything they need. It depends a lot on what is available. And even if everything is available goats can be picky against their own interest.

    Apart from herding goats, additional feeding of goats can be a good thing. This can make the goats stronger and makes them give more milk or better meat. It can also prevent the loss of goat kids at an early age.

    The industrial way of feeding goats.

    In more industrialised areas goats are often kept inside in big barns. The feed these goats get seems to be far off from the diet that they used to have.

    These goats are often fed hay (free available), alfalfa hay (substitute for greens) and pellets or grains.

    The pallets and grain mixes that are fed to these goats are based on what goats used to eat and how their digestive system works. The composition of these feeds are based on studies on what goats can digest. Tables and calculations preceded the production of these feeds.

    Goats are very flexible indeed.

    How to apply what you have just learned on feeding your goats

    Only give goats feed that is suitable for goats.

    Goats are ruminants. Ruminants live in symbiosis with the microbes that live in their stomach. The microbes digest the food that a goat eats for the goat. Feeding a goat means feeding her stomach microbes. The microbes in the stomach form a sensitive ecosystem that has to be treated with care e.g. by not changing food abruptly or not giving the goat food that is not suitable for goats (like chicken feed or pork feed). Feed that is for sheep is still acceptable.

    Never change a goats food too quick. It can be dangerous for goats.

    • In a natural environment the food that goats eat will change per season. Since the change from one season into the other happens gradually the food that the goats would eat will also change gradually. The goats digestive system is designed for slow changes in food. The microbes that digest the food can only adapt slowly to the food changes.
    • Goats will also be fine without greens e.g. in winter when they live indoors. Always gradually introduce your goats back into eating greens. A sudden change from no greens to a lot of greens will heavily upset the microbes in the goat’s stomach. Sticky poop or diarrhea can be the effect.

    Points where you should evaluate the goats feeding.

    • When the goat is fed properly and the microbes in her stomach are happy, the goat poops are loose pellets that do not stick together. When a goats poop is sticky or is diarrhea, the goat has eaten something wrong, the food was too rich or there was an abrupt change in food.
    • Goats might not be able to meet all their nutritious needs by eating, they can be too picky or do not get the variety they need. When there are losses in the herd in kids or adult goats it is a sign the food should be evaluated. Giving some pellets or grain can already solve the problem. In some cases additives are needed, for this I would consult a vet.

    Do not overfeed your goat with grains and pellets, make sure there is hay.

    Goats natural diet contains a lot of long fibers, there is not so much starch in it. Grains mixes and feed pellets contain short fibers and lots of starch. These feeds should not be given in big quantities. This will make the microbes in their stomach unhappy.

    Hay also has a lot of long fibers. It is good to have hay always available for your goats.

    Providing a large variety of greens to your goat would be a good thing.

    Goats like fresh greens because they contain a lot of energy. Fresh greens are healthy for goats. It contains fibers, vitamins and minerals. When given in a large variety it is good food for goats, it will provide them with all their needs. A pasture or shrub field with a good variety of herbs, shrubs, trees and grasses provides good food for goats.

    Goats can be fed in different ways,

    but the way their digestive system works has to be taken into account. E.g. goats can live on a diet of hay, alfalfa hay and pellets for ever. As long as there are no sudden changes in this diet and the food that is given is suitable for goats. The food that is given needs to be of a good quality so the goats nutritional needs are met.

    Goats have their own eating rhythm.

    In a situation where there are predators goats will eat in the early morning and evening when predators are less active. In a save situation like on your property they can adapt the rhythm to the circumstances.

    This can be a rhythm of eating for 2 hours and resting for halve an hour. This can even continue during the night.

    This means that goats like to walk in and out of their shelter to get a bite. When they are free ranged. When goats are living indoors or staying indoors at night for safety reasons it is nice for them if they have hay free available, this way they can eat whenever they like.

    Resources:

    How does a rumen work?  The system of all ruminants works basically the same. Goats, sheep and cows are all ruminants. This video, which is about a cows stomachs, explains in more detail how the rumination process works, it also stresses the role of the microorganisms in the stomach. What is explained in this video also counts for goats.

    Digestion in ruminants.  A detailed description of the whole digestive system of ruminants. The symbiosis between the micro-organismes and the ruminant is explained in detail.

    Ruminant stomach-structure and function. Short explanation of the ruminants digestive system.

    Rumen microbial fermentation. The ecosystem and the importance of it’s balance in the ruminants stomachs in detail. What is described also counts for goats.

    Het graasgedrag van de landgeit in Nederland, en verkenning (Grazing habit of the country goats in the Netherlands, and reconnaissance) Anneke de Vries & Nick van Eekeren,© [2007] Louis Bolk Instituut, the Netherlands.

     

    What do goats eat?

  • Body Condition Scoring for dairy goats, made easy.

    Body Condition Scoring for dairy goats, made easy.

     

    Why Body Condition Scoring?

     

    Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is a practical DIY tool to find out what fat and muscle reserves a goat has. It is a way to find out about the well being of a goat. Whether it gets enough nutrition and is living in the right conditions. It can be used as a feeding management tool.

     

    What is a Body Condition Scoring?

     

    It is a scoring scale with which you can visually score the condition of, in the case of this blog, a goat. There are BCS scales for horses and for pets as well. The BCS scale for goats goes from 1 to 5. Score 1 indicating an extreme deficiency of fat and muscle reserves and score 5 indicates an extreme accumulation of body fat.

    A score of two and below means the goat has insufficient reserves for a high level of production. When the score is approaching 5 there is a risk of pregnancy toxaemia, metabolic disease and difficulty kidding.

    For an ideal score you would stay between these extremes. Which for a goat in the prime of its life, would be somewhere between the score of 3-3,5. When the goat is in a good condition it means it will have less health problems and it will reduce the number of babies lost in the first week after they were born.

     

    Factors that will influence the goat’s body condition.

     

    There can be a variation of reasons why the score is in these extremes. Scores below 2 can indicate dental problems, parasites, cancers or infections. We are talking about extreme situations, so I think in case this happens to your goats it is time to contact a vet. As a good goat keeper you will probably be contacting a vet long before your goat hits this score.

    A goat that scores approaching 5 is likely be overfeeding or has a lack of exercise. Some dominant goats can steel almost all the food from the other goats and doing so get overweight.

    Here is a more detailed description of the factors that influence a BCS for a goat.

    Nutrition

    When high producing breeds are producing milk and are not fed according to the production level, they do not always reduce their productivity. Instead they would use their muscle and fat reserves to produce the milk.

    Even if goats have a rich pastor that has everything in it they need, they might still not eat what they need. Goats can be very picky in what they eat. So when they are  producing milk they might not adjust their habit in what they like to eat in the pastor. The result can be that they do not get the nutrients that they need and might have to be fed additionally.

    Level of production

    To keep an ideal score the level of production and the feeding schedule need to be in balance. If the high producing goats gets to little nutrients the score will go down. On the other hand goats that are fed on a high producing schedule and do not give the high production of milk will go up in the score. So the amount of feed and the production are very related.

    Stage of lactation and gestation

    In the first 60 days of lactation goats will lose 0,5-1  scores. This is during their peak of lactation. In general, after 150 days of lactation they will start gaining the los back to their normal level. This is a natural thing and does not need any worry. When conditions are ideal they will then keep their scoring until drying off Which is usually two month before kidding. During this last two month of the pregnancy it is desirable that  the goat maintains the same score.

    Sometimes goats are dried off but are milked through for a variation of reasons. When milking through the goat will naturally increase in scoring. For this reason some goat keepers milk their goats through only for 2 years. However new insights have shown that it does goats no harm if you milk them through for many years when you adjust the feeding to their scoring.

    When goats are kept dry for long it can also result in a higher scoring and the feed has to be adjusted to keep them on an ideal score.

    Age

    When goats are older than 7 years it is harder for them to keep the same muscle and fat reserves. It is a natural thing that will happen, to most goats. It is desirable though to not let them go too low on the score so they will maintain an acceptable body condition.

    Age of kidding

    Goats that kid at an early age, around a year old, and that give an adequate amount of milk, can hardly be overfed. When goats are kidding at 1,5 – 2 years, you will have to keep an eye on their score and might have to adjust their feed.

    Health

    Serious goat health problems will lead to a decrease of muscle and fat reserves. This can be parasites, viral or bacterial disease, dental problems and many other chronic conditions.

    Problems in bone structures and misalignment of teeth

    A dairy goat with problems in the bone structure might be less able to walk to feed, forage and water. When the problem is less serious it might still be problematic to compete with the other goats in the group for feed.  less able to compete with other animals in the group, and to get to and from the milking parlor.

    A misalignment of teeth can cause difficulties to eat, which can result in slow eating.

     

    How to use BCS as a management tool?

     

    This scoring is done by scoring each animal individually. I could imagine that if you have a lot of goats you start making an estimate on sight to start with. And when you see that some animals need a closer look, you than separate them to take an individual scoring.

    Managing your goats so they will each of them, more or less, be at an ideal score means you have to organise your goat place in a way so this is possible. Goats are herding animals which have a strong social order. This means you sometimes have to give the lower in rank the chance to ge to their feed. It can be done by feeding goats individually.

    We do this while they get milked. So we know they all get enough (and fore some, not too much) of their basics. The hey and fresh greens are fed collective in our small goat barn. The greedy ones naturally get more. If I see that this leads to an imbalances in the scoring I divide them in smaller groups and feed these groups separately. Usually there is enough feed in the shrub lands to balance it. Only in the very dry summers which can last until September, there is not enough feed in the shrub lands. That is when I have to watch them.

    The goats will never be exactly the same. Our dominant goat Bianca will always get more feed then our goat Kimberly, but the differences will be within acceptable limits.

    Goats that are only free ranged and do not get extra nutrition will have a low BCS. This is how for many centuries goats were and are kept in the poorer agricultural areas. The backside of this system is that the loss of goats is relatively big and the production very low. For modern standards, I think, it would be considered an inefficient system for production.

    Adding new goats from outside the family can also cause some problem for the newcomers to get to their feed. It is good to keep an eye on that and manage it a bit at the start, so they will get enough too.

     

    How is the scoring done?

     

    I did quite a bit of research for this blog, and doing so I came across a very good Youtube video. I could not explain it better than Elizabeth Henning, appraiser from the American Dairy Goat Association. She does it all by heard. The good thing of this scoring is that you do not need to turn your goat upside down, as you need to do with some of them.

    The video, which is made by UC Davis Vet Med, gives the information very quickly so I made a small summery below. You might want to read this first. Some things are easy to miss or hard to remember afterwards. In the picture below you can see where the regions are on the goat’s body.

    Here is the link: Dairy Goat Body Condition Scoring

    The scouring is done in three regions of the goats body.
    1. Shoulder region
      1. Underline of the neck; shoulder region into the brisket; accumulation of flesh at the brisket.
      2. Neck meets the shoulder blade, amount of fleshing from wethers to the point of shoulder; fullness and degree of fill; fleshing overline the neck, shoulder and ribs./li>
      3. Over the ribs above (!) the point of elbow palpable or visible.
    2. Loin; rump; hips and pins
      1. The degree of muscle and fat covering the loin.
      2. The amount of filling at the end of the spine (the ‘flatish’ part before the tail).
    3. Tail and tail head (only score 2 and below and approaching score 5)
      1. The amount of fleshing and the flexibility of the tail skin, you will have to take the tail in your hand with your thumb above and your fingers under it.
      2. The amount of fleshing visible above the tailbone at the base of tail.

     

    Goat for BCS

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    [pmc_box border_color=”#ccce44″ text_color=”#000″ background_color=”#cdcea5″ ]For this blog I used information from the video Dairy Goat Body Condition Scoring ; the website https://www.sheepandgoat.com/ and from an the article DAIRY GOAT BODY CONDITION SCORING.[/pmc_box]

  • What do goats eat?

    What do goats eat?

    Rather than being grazers, goats are browsers: they look beyond the grassy pasture to the shrubs and small trees. While they occasionally (and possibly disastrously) love fresh green herbs and vegetables from the garden, their preferred diet is a mix: some grass, some herbs, and some leaves of the trees and shrubs. If it’s the right season and they can reach it, they might pick a fresh apple, or eat one that dried on the tree. Yum! Goats also have individual preferences. Some of our goats like carob, others don’t even look at it.

    To survive goats don’t need a lot. Traditionally in Europe  goats were kept in herds, they could be kept in mountainous areas where nothing much would grow. However losses of goats kids and adults were high and the milk production low. The great thing of goats is that if you provide them with better conditions they will be much more profitable. Well fed goats can, depending on the breed produce up to 5 liter of milk a day.

    We want to give our goats a healthy basis, and make goat keeping economic. That is why we provide them with a meal twice a day. Our goats, regardless of what else they eat, get a grain-alfalfa based mix twice a day while they get milked. Since we are doing this we have no more losses in goat babies, the babies are strong, our goats look healthy, and we hardly have any medical issues. So if you have a pasture, use the goats for weed control or herd them or what ever, give them a good dietary base.

    Buying or making a feed mix?

    There are two things you can do, you can buy a good goat mix, or as we do, you can make a mix yourself.

    There are some reasons why we mix our own. It  is slightly cheaper in our case. The ingredients we buy: alfalfa pellets, barley, oats, sunflower seeds and feed broad beans. When available we also buy carob. Buying the ingredients separate is cheaper than buying a pre mix. Another reason is that the pre mix contains GMO corn, which we do not wish to use because of the potential risk of pesticide remnants.  When you have a lot of space and energy you could even grow the ingredients of our mix yourself, there is nothing very fancy in there, yet it keeps the goats healthy.

    The mixture we made is based on a study of a table of cattle food values. From these values we made a calculation. The outcome is a mix of 4 parts alfalfa pellets, 3 parts barley, 3 parts oats, 1 part feed broad beans, 1 part carob and 2% sunflower seeds (then latter can be done by estimation).
    These are the amounts we give to our adult goats daily (the ration depends on the weight of the goat):

    Milking goat: 1800 gr
    Pregnant goat: 1400 gr
    Regular maintenance: 1000gr
    Billy goat outside breeding season: 200gr
    Billy goat with in breeding season: 1200gr

    The other food sources our goats have is a pasture on shrub land where they can freely snack; in January and February they are taken out every morning for 2 hours for a walk in an orchard with a lot of herbs and grass. The goats always have hey available.

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    What do goats eat?

  • Farming story: Goats, Milk and Cheese…

    Farming story: Goats, Milk and Cheese…

    In the morning, when we get up I see our goat Bianca through the window. She is looking though the window into our sleeping room, thinking: “maybe they are up and bring me some food”… So the morning starts; and our little farming story. After breakfast I go down to the goats to feed and milk them.

    Goat
    Our goat Bianca on our terrace.

    Feeding our goats

    Goats need enough nutrients to give a good amount of milk. In the past, and still in some regions of this world, goats used and are kept very low profile. They are not fed at all, they were just herded in sometimes poor landscapes. The production of milk was very low and the loss of animals was high.

    Although some people still keep their goats in the old traditional way, nowadays goats are mostly kept for a high milk production. The Dutch white milking goat who descents from the Saanen goat, gives up to 4 liters of milk per goat per day. These goats are kept inside in large barns and they are fed special food high in nutreints. We want  to stay somewhat in the middle.

    Our Bianca gives us about 2 liters of milk a day. She gets 1800 grams of a mixture of Luzern, barley, oats, fodder broad beans and sunflower seeds a day. All our goats get the same mixture but the amount is in accordance with their weight and situation. The situation can be that they are pregnant, giving milk or non of the two. Goats that give milk need to eat the most. If you want to read more about what to feed goats check or blog: ‘What do goats eat?‘

    Free ranging goats

    Our goats have about a hectare of land where they can walk freely. So they can choose what they want to eat. Most of the year they stay in their area where they can eat what grows inside and where we feed them cuttings from the trees and bushes that we have to clear or prune.

    During the winter month (January and February) we take them through the orchard for two hours a day, which they enjoy a lot. This also ads valuable nutrients to their diet. When the early apples start to bloom we have to stop otherwise they will eat the flowers and we will be without apples. You can reed more in our blog ‘Clearing Land With Goats’.

     

    Goat kid
    Goat kid

    Milking and making cheese

    We build a shelter for the goats where they can walk in and out during the day.  Attached to the shelter is our milking parlour where the goats are milked twice a day, every morning and evening.

    After milking the milk gets pasteurised. After it has cooled down it goes into the fridge until we have enough milk to make a batch of cheese.

    Most of the time I make fresh cheese but when I have too much milk I make cured cheese, like Caerphilly, Gouda or Romano.

    The milk of our goats does not taste very goaty when it is pasteurised straight away. It is also very creamy, delicious for making cheese with.

    Cheese making goes way back into the European history, long before the romans. Nobody really knows when and where it started, but I can imagine that it was a good way to deal with the not so tasty sour milk. Turn the sour stuff in something useful with a good taste.

    Fresh cheese Terra do Milho
    Fresh cheese from Terra do Milho

    Eating cheese back in the days was not without danger. People had no clue about hygiene, things sometimes got out of hand and people got poisoned. Working clean really makes some sense.

    Why pasteurizing is important

    Another thing that people sometimes forget is that pasteurising milk has a purpose. When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurisation he solved a problem. People got really ill from drinking cow’s milk, it was a cause of tuberculosis. You can also get a nasty thing from raw goats milk, it is called Brucellosis and it feels like a terrible flew that takes forever. Luckily our goats are tested every year, so we know they don’t have it and their raw milk is safe. We also intent to use our own bucks for mating the ladies, which reduces the risk of infection. Pasteurising even eliminates the risk further, also I mainly use it because of the soft taste the cheese gets. Eating matured cheese was and is never a risk in this case, the diseases disappear when the cheese is maturing.

    Blue cheese from Terra do Milho
    Making cured blue cheese.

    I had never milked a goat, nor made cheese before

    When we bought our first two goats I never had milked a goat and I never made cheese myself. Apart from some paneer, which is more like cooked milk with lemon and then drained through a cloth. No, I mean real cheese making. After reading a very good Dutch book on cheese making, ‘Kaas je kaasje’ I just started making cheese. It was surprisingly easy and before I new I invented my own type of fresh cheese, which I still make today.

    The little booklet explains the principles of cheese making very well. It encouraging you to invent your own cheese. For making the matured cheeses I adjust cows milk recipes, this works fine. If you want to know more of how I make fresh cheese check this recipe.  I have it all in a document with some pictures which I can send to you.

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    Goats, goatsmilk, cheese
    Farming story…
  • Clearing land with goats.

    Clearing land with goats.

    Every year in January and February we walk the goats over our terraced orchard. Yes! Right though our orchard. Clearing land with goats and having fruittrees at the same time is very possible.

    We have about 80 fruittrees on our terraced land. In summer the trees are irrigated and nothing much grows under the trees. But in during the winter month weeds start to grow and by January – February there is a lush layer of weeds growing. Clearing our land with goats saves us quite a bit of work. The secret is that most fruit trees do not have leaves at this time of  the year. That is why the goats are not interested in the trees at all; however, they do love the weeds amongst and under the trees. You still need to watch them because you never know with goats. They can suddenly do crazy things.

    land clearing - goats
    Feeding the goats with cuttings

    Clearing the terraces is important because it helps the fruit trees to grow. It also reduces the risk of wildfires on our land. In this way the goats help us, and we help the goats have a great healthy meal. There is a wide variation of herbs growing under the trees, by eating these the goats will be able to balance their diet. See more about this topic in our blog ‘What do goats eat’.

    When the goats are back in their pasture we also give them the greens from our own clearing activities. They will eat the leaves from the branches, which makes it easier for us to put it in the mulching machine.

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    Clearing with goats
    Clearing your Orchard with goats…