Feeding Goat

Feeding goat is a very important aspect of goat rearing. Goats stay in herds and they like to graze and chew in vast acres of green lands. If you are keeping a goat as a pet you are required to provide your goat with good nutritious food items. Goats are ruminant herbivorous as a result of which they generally chew a good quantity of food. For feeding goat you are required to arrange for a diet that consists of equal amounts of energy, proteins, vitamins and other minerals in right proportions. For maintaining good health of your goat provide at least 3% of its diet with dry roughage. This would help to avoid digestive disturbances.

Feeding Goat Food

A nutritious balanced diet food would also help you to keep the goat physically active and less prone to diseases. The following are some food items that are used for feeding goats.

• Pastures – Common vegetative pastures have high protein content and are ideal for feeding goats. But they also have very high level of moisture in them which can create digestive disturbances for a doe or a growing goat kid. Goats are natural browsers and have the unique quality of selecting vegetative pastures that are of high nutrition content and free of parasites. Woody plants, bush, vines and weeds are good pastures for goats to eat.
• Hay – Hay is of moderate nutrition content and generally used for goat feeding during the time of not grazing season or the winter months. The quality of hay varies from stock to stock so testing of the nutrition content of the hay should be done in a laboratory for forage testing. Leguminous hays like the alfalfa, lespedeza, clover and such are ideal goat hays for feeding.
• Silage – Silage are made from the forage of cereal crops. But the silage quality has to be determined before hand. Silage that is moldy in nature should not be given to goats as fodder. Goats get prone to the disease called listeriosis or the circling disease on feeding on moldy silage. Fresh silage contains a lot of moisture and may not be ideal food for high producing doe.
• Grain Concentrates – Pasture feeding is not enough for goats. To provide a proper diet a goat has to be fed with grain concentrates. Concentrates are mainly of two types, carbonaceous concentrates and proteinaceous concentrates. The carbonaceous concentrates in the form of grains like barley, wheat, oats, milo, rye and such. They should not be fed in large quantities as many of the concentrates have low calcium content and high phosphorous content leading to a urinary disease called Proteinaceous concentrates or kidney stones. The protein concentrates are mainly in the form of soy beans and cotton seed meal and such.
• Apart from protein goats also require minerals like vitamins, phosphorous and calcium. Goats should have calcium and phosphorous in the ratio 1:2. Vitamins though required by goats but certainly not in large quantities. Goats mainly need vitamins A, D and E whereas all the B vitamins and vitamin K are manufactured in the rumen of the goat itself.
• Water should be given to goats in large quantities. An average sized goat should be given ѕ to 1 Ѕ gallons of water every day. In take of inadequate water may also lead to incidence of many diseases. Even the quantity of feed can also lessen down to a great extent if enough water is not taken in.