How many goats

[lovinglife]

I have a little over 2 acres of lush irrigated pasture, how many goats can that contain with supplemental hay? I am thinking about starting with 5 babies, 3 girls and 2 wethers, then doing a stud service for the girls when they are old enough and selling or butchering the males. Does this sound like a good amount or will all the babies the next year be too many?

Thanks!

 

[Straw Hat Kikos]

If you have good enough browse and hay then you can have six goats per acre of usable space. That's the great thing about goats. With cows you can have one per acre but with goats you can have 6 per acre. Sorry for the quick answer. : ) Busy!!

 

[lovinglife]

cool, so I can eventually have more. Another question, we do a lot of grass mowing and right now we give the clippings to the cows, I know they can handle it, not good for horses, so how about goats? Can I give goats bagged grass clippings?

 

[Straw Hat Kikos]

You can but they more than likely won't eat it. Goats are browsers not grazers. If you really only have grass for then then sheep might be your best bet. Goats don't really like to eat grass very much, and they will also have more issues with worms. The best worm preventer is browse because they have their heads up. If you can keep your goats heads up then they will do better. Also the Barber-pole worm, which is the most common worm for goats, is best controlled by keeping your grass about 3 in tall. The reason is, the larva of the barber-pole worm can not "craw" above three inches. So if you do have goats in all or mostly pasture make sure the grass is tall.

 

[Mamaboid]

cool, so I can eventually have more. Another question, we do a lot of grass mowing and right now we give the clippings to the cows, I know they can handle it, not good for horses, so how about goats? Can I give goats bagged grass clippings?

We don't bag our clippings, we mow when the grass gets high, then let it dry in lawn just like hay would, then rake it up and feed it to the goats, use it for bedding, and feed it to the rabbit. Just be careful that you don't give too much as it will give them the scours if they are not used to it. Bagging it would keep it wet and that would NOT be good for the goats. If you can let it dry first, it would probably be ok in moderation.

 

[manybirds]

I make sure mine always have a small amount of hay available in the summer, generally they stay out and browse during the day and come in and munch and sleep at night. in the winter i give them unlimited amount of grass hay and a few pads of alfalfa at night to my dairy doe's

 

[lovinglife]

Our pasture is mostly grass, so this would not be good? I did not know this when I had milk goats years ago. We have smallish trees in our pasture, would they eat the trees?

 

[Catahoula]

Yup, they'll eat the tree...leaves on branches that are low enough and the bark too. I wrapped chicken wires around the tree truck. We also have tall grass and they hard ate that. They love the bushes and woody ground covers.

 

[manybirds]

Our pasture is mostly grass, so this would not be good? I did not know this when I had milk goats years ago. We have smallish trees in our pasture, would they eat the trees?

yes your pasture should be good enough, though offering a small amount of grass hay would be a good idea, they probably won't eat much of it if they have grass too. what are the trees? if they can reach the branches and leaves they'll eat them (even the pines)

 

[lovinglife]

our trees are all young pines, and I would be feeding grass hay every day. The cows already took out some of the trees, so not sure if I would worry about that too much, I would probably fence off a few of the nicer ones.