Which cut of hay is best?

[Chickenfever]

I'm new to goats,I have had two mini manchas for 4 weeks now. I've read so much about goats in the last couple of months and I'm still confused about many things.

The feed store told me to feed them grass and sold me bermuda. Now I'm thinking they should be eating alfalfa. Should I mix half and half grass/alfalfa? Which cutting of alfalfa is best? The goats should both be pregnant.

Currently they eat free choice bermuda hay, half a cup each of purina goat chow every day, and half a cup each of estrella horse alfalfa pellets every day. Loose minerals free choice. Any advise appreciated.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

There are a lot of factors that decide which hay is best. Generally speaking, the second and third cuttings are "best" because first cutting tends to get a bit mature before it gets cut. This doesn't mean all second or third cutting is better than first though. If the hay isn't cured properly, if it's handled too much (which causes lots of leaf loss), or if it's rained on, it could be very poor quality.

I generally look for second or third cutting, make sure it's nice and green and leafy (not stemmy), and make sure it smells sweet, not musty. The only real way to tell is to have it tested so you can tell percent protein, etc, but these are generally ways to look for good hay. Sometimes color will fade and they hay will still be nice. If you're buying hay from a farmer, ask to cut open a bale, since it's hard to tell quality on the outside. The bale might look stemmy and dull, but it could be nice and green and leafy on the outside (handling alfalfa causes leaf loss on the outer parts of the bale).

What age goats do you have? Are they young or mature? Are they breeding/production animals or just pets? This will determine your feeding needs. I personally would just feed grass hay if they were adult pets, but their needs vary depending on life stage and if they're breeding/milking/meat animals, etc.

 

[Chickenfever]

The goats are one year old and three years old. Both are pregnant due in April and May. I bought these goats for milk ( and pets).

 

[ksalvagno]

Some alfalfa hay is good for the pregnant ones. Second or third cut for any hay is usually the best hay. If you are feeding alfalfa pellets and can't get hold of alfalfa hay, then just up the pellet amount a bit.

 

[cmjust0]

Totally depends. If they're fat, you could feed grass hay and skip the grain until they thin down.. If they're too thin, you could feed alfalfa until they get some condition...or feed grass and supplement with more grain, if that's more economical. If you have really cold climates, you might actually want the first cut because it's stemmier...course hay = heat. But if your goats make tumbleweeds out of 1st cut stems and end up wasting most of it, and if 2nd cut isn't that much more expensive and they'll eat it all, 2nd cut may simply be more economical. Or perhaps you can get a good mix of...whatever...timothy/clover is a personal fave of mine...that keeps them in good condition with no grain at all. Or, or, or....

There are many, many ways to feed a goat, and the variables are endless. In my opinion, that makes it almost impossible to offer much in the way of advice except to say this: feed according to condition.

When I got in the mindset of feeding to condition, I started to look at feeding in a different light entirely. All the doubts about whether or not they were "supposed" to have this or that sorta fell away and I was actually forced to make decisions about each goat, one by one.. In my case, some were way too fat and some could have used some extra groceries...which made a "universal" feeding routine all the more difficult. I was paying good money for an alfalfa mix hay at the time, and I knew that if I continued doing that to benefit the thin ones, the tubbies would become absolutely obese... So, I switched over to a cheaper grass and grass/clover hay, cut the tubbies waaaaaaaaay down on grain, and proceeded to grain the thinner ones a little more heavily...

Before ya know it, my thin goats were looking much better, my fat goats were looking much slimmer, and my overall feeding bill dropped quite a bit.. Reason being, I can get on-label 16% goat pellets for $7.50/bag, and this particular grain is more effective at putting weight on a goat, dollar for dollar, than the most expensive hay I could buy.. So, for me, graining a handful of goats a little extra was not only offset by cutting the rest of them way back on grain, but also by dropping from $$ alfalfa mix hay to grass hay..

Thin goats slicker...fat goats thinner...my wallet fatter... That's a win/win/win, and the effort on my part is absolutely minimal.

 

[Chickenfever]

OK, I really appreciate the input. Now, this may be a dumb question, but how do you tell if a goat is overweight?

 

[cmjust0]

I usually start by feeling just behind their front elbow...

In my opinion:

A) If there's no detectable fat there at all, they're too thin.
B) If you can sorta grab a handful there, they're too fat.
C) If there's a little bit of fat there, but not enough to really latch onto, they're just about right.

There are, of course, shades of gray in between.. If you're for sure there's some fat there, but not quite enough to get a big handful of it....she's probably still overweight, just not quite as bad. And if you're feeling around on her going "Well, I think that's fat, but maybe it's just extra skin..." she could probably use some extra groceries..

You get what I'm saying, I'm sure..

I also check their tailheads occasionally, if I'm kinda on the fence about whether a goat's too fat or just well conditioned.. A well conditioned goat, in my opinion, will have just a teeny bit of fattiness right around where the tail meets the body.. If there's no fat there...too thin. If it feels like a 'pone' of fat there that's sorta starting to creep from the tail out toward the sides and up toward the pinbones...too fat.

That's just how I like to keep my goats, though.. Other folks have other opinions.. For instance, some folks keep dairy goats really, really thin....pinbones visible, sunken tailheads, a little ribby.. I don't like that, personally, because if a super thin, near-zero-percent bodyfat goat gets a scour or something like that, they seem to dehydrate and go down much faster than a goat with a little bit of condition on it. In my opinion, a goat that's going hand to mouth, day in, day out, just doesn't have the 'reserves' it needs should something go wrong.

But, again...these are just my opinions.

Oh hey, did I mention that these are just my opinions?

Because they are...just my opinions.

Everybody keeps their goats the way they wanna keep their goats, and you should too.. This level of condition seems to work for me.