Official SS Goat Thread

[FarmerDenise]

Tomorrow I am supposed to get my kids.
I have a question about horns. Do you recommend disbudding? I am leaning toward yes.
The goats I am getting are Alpine/LaMancha cross and Nubian/LaMancha cross.

 

[freemotion]

It is really a matter of personal preference. I won't be disbudding mine this time. I currently have three without horns and one with. Experience will tell me soon enough if I can live with horns or not. I have no issues with Mya's horns. No more so than with any of the other goats. They all head-butt. Any handy beatin' stick puts Mya right back in her place, just gotta smack her hard enough (not very, really) near the base of her horns to vibrate her skull! Then she sticks her tongue out and backs down.

 

[ksalvagno]

I plan on disbudding all my kids. I have one goat with horns and personally can't stand them. I plan on banding her horns. But that is just my personal opinion.

 

[lupinfarm]

I think it is really just personal preference for most. In my case it is a matter of safety for my two does already. Both are polled, and normally if they were standards that wouldn't be a concern but they're both under 60lbs so disbudding the doelings we're getting is a must.

 

[FarmerDenise]

We like for all our animals on the farm to live together, so I would worry about the dog getting hit by a horned goat. Also the potential of human kids getting hurt.
Like I said I am leaning toward dehorning them. Maybe my future goats will get to keep their horns. I need some experience first. I just don't like the idea of mutilating any creature for no good reason.

 

[freemotion]

I am convinced that Mya could and would kill a dog. I hope she could kill a coyote!

 

[justusnak]

I am convinced that Mya could and would kill a dog. I hope she could kill a coyote!

Thats why we chose to leave Nellys horns. Its all the protection they have. For the most part, she is cautious when the grandkids are in there, and the grandkids know to watch for the horns.

 

[lorihadams]

Ours are going to be disbudded, with my kids only being 3 and 5 they are just the right height to get clipped in the head or eyes by a horn....just don't want to take that chance.

 

[cmjust0]

Notice that is something I quoted from another breeder. I would have to ask her to get her personal opinion on it. I have never fed beet pulp to a goat so I would not know.

I gotcha...I mean, I knew it was a quote from an email or something, so perhaps I should have asked 'why would one not feed'.. Or something like that..

I've kinda had it in my head that if/when I start up with commercial market goats, I may just add beet pulp to the diet for wethers.. I know it swells when wetted, which I think could be interesting for rumen development, and I know it contains a good deal of calcium.. Calcium is good for boys because it helps them take phosphorus into the bloodstream instead of sending it into the bladder where it can combine with ammonia and magnesium to create struvite....aka, urinary calculi.

I asked because I've heard people advise against feeding clover, alfalfa and other high-calcium feeds to males because "calcium causes urinary calculi"...which is just one of those things that's false, yet continues to be perpetuated.. Indeed, calcium helps prevent urinary calculi...which is why most commercial goat feed is mixed to contain twice as much calcium as phosphorus..

Anyway...I dunno, I guess I was just curious if the calcium thing was the reason, or if there was something else about beet pulp that made it unsuitable for boys..

Also, Cmjust, I remember you saying something on BYH about 'red is dead' when speaking about minerals. I don't remember all of what you said, but I was wondering if you would share what you know about feeding goats minerals? I am quite interested

The "if it's red, it's dead" thing was a quote from a whitepaper authored by Mr. Terry Hutchins, the goat specialist at the University of Kentucky. The reason he wrote it that way was because the red color in mineral usually comes from 'ferrous oxide'...aka, rust. There's practically no bioavailability at all to iron oxide..

What Hutchins was getting at is that if they use ferrous oxide in their mineral as the source of iron...instead of ferrous sulfate, for instance...there's a good chance that they're cheaping out on everything else and using stuff like copper oxide and other low-bioavailability minerals.

If you want to know what NOT to look for in a mineral mix, go pick up a bag of "American Stockman Big 6 Trace Mineral" from TSC and have a look at the label. Big 6 is basically the perfect example of what to avoid in a mineral mix.

It just also happens that "American Stockman" is owned by North American Salt Company, which is owned by Compass Minerals...which primarily sells road salt. No surprise that Big 6 is mostly salt with a few junk minerals thrown in to meet label requirements, eh?

But I digress.....

Ok, so here's the thing though.....the 'red=dead' saying doesn't always hold up because some mineral makers are adding ferrous oxide strictly for color to otherwise good mineral mixes these days.. I suspect it's so they can avoid returned product and/or angry phone calls accusing them of mis-mixing batches of mineral on account of it being light brown or gray when people are so used to their mineral being red. Speculation, of course, but..

The bottom line, for me, when it comes to mineral is making sure there are lots of sulfates and chelates on the label, with as few oxides as possible. If ferrous oxide is listed, make sure there's some other form of iron...ferrous sulfate, for instance. Some even mark it "ferrous oxide (for color)", which I think is really a smart move..

Also, I'd suggest making sure there's AT LEAST as much calcium in the mix as phosphorus -- more is better -- and make sure it contains pretty decent levels of both copper (sulfate or chelate) and selenium ('organic' selenium like selenomethionine/selenized yeast/sel-plex are better than 'inorganic' selenium like sodium selenite, etc, but I wouldn't split hairs).

And I'd avoid feeding a "Hi-Mag" or "Spring" mineral if males have access to it.. Magnesium is one of the three components of struvite, or 'MAP' stones -- magnesium ammonium phosphate. Struvite stones make up the vast majority of urinary calculi cases..

If you look at "urinary tract health" catfood, most don't balance the Ca ratio like goat chow does....they just drop the magnesium! If you've ever had a cat to the vet for bladder issues, they too get struvites in the vast majority of cases.. So while I've never heard anything specifically about not allowing males access to high-mag mineral, I have read (somewhere) that one shouldn't make any effort to supplement magnesium intake in male goats...sooooo....makes sense to me that you keep males OUT of hi-mag mineral to avoid an increased risk of urinary calculi.

Other than that...my advice is always to set out small amounts of mineral at a time and keep it refreshed often.. The myth about goats "taking what they need" of the mineral is hogwash.... If mineral is old or soiled or otherwise unappealing, the goats won't take it even if they need it, so setting out huge quantities of mineral and trusting a goat to consume what it needs simply doesn't work..

Indeed, there have been times when we've set out a small amount of mineral and noticed that it sat for a few days untouched.. After a while, we simply assume that someone has soiled it somehow ( sneezed in it? got a little pee-spray on it? who knows.. ) so we go ahead and dump it and refill again with a little fresh mineral.

Inevitably, the new fresh mineral disappears within hours.

Doing it this way, when I ran through my last bag, I figured out that I had a wastage of about 15-20% (8-10lbs of 50lb sack -- not too bad, really) and the time it took the goats to consume the rest had it averaging out to just a little over 1/2oz per head per day. Most minerals you buy target the consumption at 1/4-1/2oz per head, per day, so we were actually a little on the high side of target.

Personally...I got no problem with that.


So that's my basic mineral schpiel in a nutshell..

 

[lorihadams]

What about the mineral blend from Hoeggers? Anyone use that?