Chat
06-09-2015, 11:20 PM
The main thing is DON'T PANIC! 
It seems like there are a lot of conflicting views on how to feed wethers. Try not to sweat it too much. There are many, many people out there doing things many different ways with good results. A lot of nutritional stuff changes depending on your circumstances and the area you live in. A person whose goats live on dry lot need different feed from ones living on pasture, and pasture goats may need different feed from goats living on more browsy or wooded land. If your goats are sleek and bright-eyed and energetic, you're probably doing it right.
If they're not drinking a lot of water it probably just means they're not thirsty. I was always amazed at how little water my goat, Cuzco, always drank, even in the summer. He's 13 years old now and hasn't ever had a problem with UC even though he was banded early, never drank much, spent the first decade of his life on a pure grass hay diet, and never had ammonium chloride (I didn't even know what it was until two years ago!). Not that I recommend doing everything "wrong" like I did, but it's a good reminder not to panic. Things usually work out ok.
Don't throw out the bags of stuff that are opened. It won't kill your goats to go through a bag of hay pellets before switching to alfalfa. Or you can buy the alfalfa pellets and mix half-and-half with the timothy. I've done that several times before when feeding Cuzco during the winter (he has no teeth, so he's my one goat that gets pelleted feed), and I've used both grass and alfalfa pellets and mixes of the two at different times and I've never had a problem with any of it.
It seems like there are a lot of conflicting views on how to feed wethers. Try not to sweat it too much. There are many, many people out there doing things many different ways with good results. A lot of nutritional stuff changes depending on your circumstances and the area you live in. A person whose goats live on dry lot need different feed from ones living on pasture, and pasture goats may need different feed from goats living on more browsy or wooded land. If your goats are sleek and bright-eyed and energetic, you're probably doing it right.
If they're not drinking a lot of water it probably just means they're not thirsty. I was always amazed at how little water my goat, Cuzco, always drank, even in the summer. He's 13 years old now and hasn't ever had a problem with UC even though he was banded early, never drank much, spent the first decade of his life on a pure grass hay diet, and never had ammonium chloride (I didn't even know what it was until two years ago!). Not that I recommend doing everything "wrong" like I did, but it's a good reminder not to panic. Things usually work out ok.
Don't throw out the bags of stuff that are opened. It won't kill your goats to go through a bag of hay pellets before switching to alfalfa. Or you can buy the alfalfa pellets and mix half-and-half with the timothy. I've done that several times before when feeding Cuzco during the winter (he has no teeth, so he's my one goat that gets pelleted feed), and I've used both grass and alfalfa pellets and mixes of the two at different times and I've never had a problem with any of it.