Want to mix my own feed, how long can I store it?

[Providence Hill]

We are new owners of a 4-year-old Nubian doe and her 1-week-old kids. She had been eating Southern States textured goat feed (sweet feed) but I am interested in creating my own mix and backing off the sweet feed. I like the 50#oats/50# barley/50#alfalfa pellets/20#BOSS recipe, but once I've purchased and mixed all this I will have about 170 lbs. of grain for one goat, and that will take a while to use up! How long can a grain mix like this be safely stored? And no, my feed store doesn't carry these grains in smaller bags, alas.

 

[goodhors]

More work, but you might make smaller batches of the mix, by weighing the
item, then putting them together. My concern would be the pellets getting
soft with humidity, sunflower seeds getting rancid in heat or infested with
moths. Oats and corn, are usually good if stored in dry places, like a garbage
can with a tight lid.

You would probably have a better time mixing the MUCH smaller
quantity of feed WELL, because it would be less to push around.

I don't have molasses in feeds because it draws water from our humid air,
causing mold in the feed VERY QUICKLY. During a feed talk, horses not
goats, the speaker who was a Vet Nutritionist, said he has found moldy
feed within 10 days of opening the feed bag of brand name feeds. I found
one bag moldy when I opened it, returned it. Opened the next bag before
leaving the store and it was also moldy. Quit feeding that high molasses
feed to the old horse!! Found another old horse feed mix, that had very
little molasses in it, never had a mold problem. The old horse had just
worn out her teeth, needed that feed as part of her ration to keep looking
good. Same Vet guy said the molasses is fed to make animals eat the
feed more readily, whether the feed is good or not, they eat it with sweet
taste. Animals don't NEED sweets to survive, so at that time I quit giving
sweets to any of my animals.

Anyway, measure out your ingredients for your new feed, by the pound,
and close up the bags tightly, store the bagged feed in metal garbage
cans, tightly closed to keep varmints out between mixing the batches.
Using a scale to get your quantity, you are not fooled with light grain,
which happens if it is real dry. Light oats or corn takes up a LOT MORE
space in your bucket, than oats or corn with more moisture in it. The
pellets will be more consistant, because they are manufactured. I don't
feed BOSS, know of horses that coliced eating it, so not on my
edible products list.

So the scale is your friend, keeps you feeding the
animals the same poundage each feeding. A pound of oats is a lot
LESS nutrition, than a pound of corn is. Using the "coffee can" method
of feeding, doesn't mean you get 3# of feed in that can, because coffee
is HEAVY and takes up less space than corn or oats. Weigh out your
finished mix of ingredients in the quantity you want to feed, see how much
it takes to get that poundage in your feeding container. If you are using
a can to scoop grain out to the feed bucket, the mix might need half a
can to have enough THIS time. Next time you buy the ingredients you
could get heavy oats and corn, so the scoop can might only need a third
of THAT mix to get your poundage needed for the goat.

Going by weight, keeps feed quantity consistant for the goat, lets you
know how long it takes to use up that amount of feed, for planning ahead
to buy new ingredients. I know I save a LOT of money feeding by the
pound over feeding by the unweighed scoop. I always get my grain
mixed in the same pound recipe totaling 440#, but sometimes I get 8
bags and other times I get 10+ bags! Horses here don't need any
extra grain calories, they get very little grain anyway. So the scale
is my friend, keeps me from over-feeding already plump animals.

 

[Pearce Pastures]

Further, molasses is very high in sulfur which can cause health problems including polioencephalitis. Good plan to back of the sweet feed.

 

[Goatherd]

If you want to mix your own feed and want to use molasses, you can alleviate your concerns by using dry or dehydrated molasses. I have my feed custom mixed at a feed store and use the dry molasses for the very reasons you mentioned.
Dry molasses is a product you can buy and not exclusive to feed stores/companies.

I have no concerns for using molasses and my goats concur.

 

[Providence Hill]

I'm thinking I may have solved my own problem -- if I mix up the recipe without the alfalfa pellets I can feed the mix to my poultry too, which will certainly deplete it faster! I'll just add the alfalfa pellets to the goat's ration separately.

This goat has never had anything other than sweet feed, so I'm thinking she may be skeptical of anything new, although she is piggy about her grain. My plan is to start adding the alfalfa pellets to the sweet feed first, then gradually add the grain mix and lessen the sweet feed until I get her converted. I also thought about just offering the alfalfa pellets free choice (she also has unlimited grass hay with a fair bit of clover in it and bamboo growing the pen), but she's super food motivated and I'm worried she might just gorge herself on them. Is that something I should worry about, or is it a non-issue with the alfalfa pellets? I've heard so many scary stories about bloat that I don't want to give her an opportunity to overdo it. I do have baking soda and Manna Pro Goat Mineral out free choice.

Thanks for the advice, I am a super newbie to goats and really want to care for her and her kids properly.

 

[Suburbanfarmer]

I just switched my goats over this week to that same mix (plus Calf Manna). A couple of things that helped me...
I got a huge metal trash can and fit quite a bit into it. I have a smaller trash can that will fit the rest as soon as I finish the transition and empty it of the old feed. I opened all the bags and lined them up in a row and mixed them a bit at a time. I took a feed bucket full of the barley and a bucket full of the oats, then about half a bucket full of each BOSS and Alfalfa and a couple of big scoops of the calf manna. I mixed that together really well in the trash can then kept repeating those steps until the trash can was full. Worked great and everything came out pretty even. I just made sure that I was at 1/2 a bag of everything at the same time.

Also, I've noticed that if I give my goats (I only have 3 ND - 2 in milk and one 4 month old) a scoop or two of anything new all together as if it was a treat they think that it is amazing and switch over readily. So, I did a couple of small scoops of the new food and let them have it in the middle of the day all together. My girls get along fairly well, so there is no fighting but they do feel that they must get in and get their treat before anyone else. Then I start to switch them over gradually on the milk stand. I'm moving them off of Purina Goat Chow. They thought that this new stuff must be great if it was given as a treat. Worked like a charm. I really thought they would have a problem with it since there is no molasses. But they didn't even seem to notice.

I found this worked when I switched them over to alfalfa pellets. At first they turned their nose up at it because it was new on the milk stand. I stopped for a couple of weeks and then gave the pellets as treats and now they gobble them up on the milk stand.

I am in the Pacific NW, so we don't have super hot weather, but my feed store said that I should be able to keep this mix for 8 months without a problem. We will see, but I haven't had any mold problems before, so I'm hopeful.

Good luck. I love that I'm able to move away from both molasses and corn!
-K