Goat kids are growing up

Biscuit continues to be a devoted mother and watches carefully over her kids.   Here she is with Pippin, who is the darker coloured of the two.  His brother Tog (he has one toggle under his chin!) is not far away.   The kids are eating well now and prefer rough grazing with lots of nettles, shrubs and branches.   They have breakfast before they go out and this consists of goat mix and rolled oats with a handful or two of bran.   Goats are very choosy about what they eat and the bucket has to be clean, they are fastidious animals – the fact that they will relish eating a rose bush or a straw hat has given them an unwarranted reputation for eating anything.  Nothing could be further from the truth.   They like fibrous plants best though and thrive on tree bark and anything that is crisp and crackly.   They don’t like any food that is soggy, perhaps this is because of their desert origins.

Here is Biscuit with Pippin and Tog, these little brothers are inseparable.   The goats only go outside on days that are fine, they don’t like wet weather and would get chilled and probably become ill if they were wet.    When it’s rainy they stay inside and have a rack of hay to eat and a bowl of Alfafa which  you can buy chopped up and ready bagged from the feed merchant.   Goats love this and it is high in the nutrients they need.    If it’s a fine day and they do go outside, they will always have a nice supper feed to come in to, mostly the same as their morning meal but a bit bigger ration.   We give them a variety of food, who wants to eat the same all the time?    Sometimes they have sugar beet pulp which has to be soaked first and never in a metal bucket which would make the beet become toxic.   Always soak the beet pulp in plastic.   There are two sorts of beet – easy beet, which only needs a short time of soaking and traditional which needs about 12 hours, the instructions are on the packet.   Beet is soaked because it swells up in the animal’s stomach and can cause colic if it’s eaten dry.

Goats also love apples, carrots and most vegetables.   They need a hay rack securely fixed to the wall at goat height and it should be kept racked up with hay at all times.  Goats are very prone to digestive upsets – the four stomachs maybe?    If they have hay to nibble whenever they want to, things rarely go wrong.   An armful of branches or rosebay willow herb is a real treat too.