Ah yes, now I remember. As my former shop foreman once said "Troy shouldn't ever have built a dam thing".
What we are feeding now is a mix of orchard, timothy,and wild grasses. The goats and llamas both seem to love it and we get less dropped feed than before because it is very fine stem. When we have hay put in next spring it will be a similar mix. We showed it to our vet and he gave us the go ahead. We are doing alfalfa as pellets for everyone and with their height it's easy to make sure the llamas get their share. Even our big mama goats can't reach the llama's bowls. If we do find a local source we can afford of alfalfa we can do a hay mix into the feeders. We hope to have all our babies back out in fields by the weekend. When they are out there we use less than half a bale of hay a day. It's taking time to clear the blackberries from the fence line to get in to replace the barb wire with mesh. Some of the canes are more than an inch in diameter. We are working are clearing a two foot path along the fence but that means cutting them off at the ground and along both sides of the path. It has meant that we have lots of blackberry leaves for the goats and llamas. There is grass in the pasture they are in and we have been giving them wind fall apples.Nice of them to start cleaning up those blackberries for you! When you get the fence fixed, they can finish the job on your side. If the neighbor wants theirs cleaned out as well, they can rent your goats.
My understanding with regard to alpacas, which I ASSUME would also apply to llamas since they are kissin' cousins, is that they shouldn't get high protein feed, second cut orchard grass is better. I know squat about goats.
I found this, it suggests anything between 100% orchard grass to a 70% orchard, 30% alfalfa mix is good for camelids. Probably easier to feed if your field is a proper mix. Not sure how you achieve it with a bale of orchard and a bale of alfalfa. Likely the more dominant animals will take what they want. Though the animals might self regulate. My boys eat some hay all summer long even though there is way more grass (type unknown) in their 1 acre enclosure than they can eat. I figured "fresh greens" would always be preferred but they have other ideas.
http://www.c-r-alpacas.com/Alpaca Tips/types_of_hay.htm
I know what you mean about the expense of alfalfa. We don't have a way to handle the big bales so it is just 65 pounders for us. The best price we have found is $13 a bale and because it is so rare here he sells out in days. With a pellet alfalfa added to a mixed orchard, timothy, wild grass hay we are getting as much as 2 gallons per goat per day from our big Nubians. Our mixed breed and Nigerian are less but still a decent amount so I think the mix we are using must be working for them. We do wish we could find a local source of alfalfa for good price.
We get our regular hay right out of the field for $3.50 for 65 lbs. If we have to get it from his barn it's $4. We have no way to get the big bales up in our hay loft, the 65 pounders are tough enough. So little alfalfa is planted here that the feed store almost never has a supply.
Clearly you need to tie the goats just out of reach of the fence so they can do all the work for you.
We have a hard blade Stihl Weedeater that lets us get in to cut the canes without getting torn up by the thorns. We have a chainsaw but it doesn't have the same reach. Burning is not a option. Though they lifted the summer burn ban last Friday, you can't do open brush burning. We had too dry of a summer. We would love to be able to do it with a bull dozer but there is a culvert on our side of the fence and not enough clearance through trees on the other side for most of the length of the fence line. Farm land is different here than the areas where I grew up in California and Montana. They carve the farms out of the forest. When our place was build in 1915 they cut the fir trees down to clear the land then milled it on sight to build every thing. The trees were 6-8 feet in diameter. The forest now is second or third growth but they are still big trees. We talked about tethering a couple goats out there to work on the blackberries but we have cougar, coyote, and bear up in the trees. Normally that wouldn't be an issue during the day but a bear is coming down after apple trees on our fence line to fatten up for the winter. Neighbors have also spotted a couple young adult cougars checking out livestock. They call the county but the cats are always gone before help arrives.
