Food, glorious food!

Hey y'all sorry its been so long! I've been crazy busy with school. Today I want to talk about food. Goats are ruminants which means they have four stomachs. This  means that they digest food differently then we do, they don't need as much food and they also need roughage. For the rumen to work correctly goats need things that we would consider inedible, like blackberry vines, pine trees and just trees and bark like things in general. The food needs of your goats entirely depends on the space you have and what you are using the goats for. For instance if you let your goats on a pasture of 25 acres, you probably won't need to supplement feed unless you have pregnant or lactating does, but if you are doing backyard goats additional food is definitely needed. I feed my goats orchard grass (a type of high quality hay) free choice and in the evening I give them a grain mixture so they get the protein and nutrients they need. Since my goats are for fiber, I add flax seeds and black oil sunflower seeds to their grain mixture because it promotes healthy and lustrous fiber. There are two ways to go about grain, you can buy the pre-mixed Purina Healthy Goat Chow (which I use) or you can make your own mixture. If I were farming on a larger scale I would make my own mixture, but since the smallest you can get is 50lbs bags of most grains, economically it doesn't make sense for me, also some of the things are hard to find and need to be special ordered. As far as portions go, there is a formula that has something to do with body weight but since I raise neither meat nor dairy goats its a little more guesswork. I give them about a cup and a half each since they are pregnant, and I will continue to give them that much until the babies are weened. When they are no longer producing I reduce the feed to 1 cup. Basically what I'm saying is that there is many approaches to feeding, and it really depends person to person how they decide to do it.