Goats and rain
Our old lab Bailey is chicken-friendly. She's so funny, hanging out with the chickens sharing veggie scraps from the kitchen.
(Darla and Rocky (our rooster) sharing the hay feeder. Esmerelda and the other does in the background. The herd got along great today in our other goat yard while I cleaned their pens.)
Boy did it rain today! I don't know what the official total was, but from the early morning hours until about 11 am it poured pretty steadily. In Surprise, Az in November, that's a gift. I enjoyed every melodious minute of it's dripping. My goats, not so much. Goats are very interesting creatures. And contrary to common myths they're not stupid, stinky animals who eat tin cans and work as living lawn mowers. The truth is they're very intelligent, clean, and other than intact males that are in rut they have no offensive odor. They're browsers (they eat with their heads up, grabbing tree branches, leaves, shrubs and vines) not grazers like sheep (they eat with their heads down). And they HATE water (other than for drinking)! So when it rains heavily, like today, leaving puddles all over the goat yard, and slushy mud in between, the goats don't like it at all. They will refuse to leave they're small pen to walk out into the yard until they see a dry patch to leap to. And boy can they leap.
So, after it stopped raining I spent the majority of the day cleaning out their stalls and shoveling wheelbarrows full of fresh, dry, dirt onto the uneven areas of their yard where inches of water had pooled. And now, I'm sore and tired. It was a workout doing all that shoveling!
I wanted to write a post about mixing your own grain for your dairy goats and share my mix recipe here, but after doing the calculations I realized I'm actually giving my does a much lower % protien mix than I thought I was. I need to tweek my recipe.
So, coming soon: a post about feed and mixing your own grain ration for your dairy goat.
That's all for now folks. This goatherder is dog tired.
