12-24-2015, 08:51 AM
Love the life jackets!
MannaPro is a good mineral I believe. Free choice is the way to do minerals if you can. You have to put them somewhere dry where the goats can reach but the horses can't, and also where the goats can't poop in it. I don't do free choice because the only good place for my mineral feeder is outside, so I've figured out (through experimentation) exactly how much my goats eat every day and I put exactly that much in the mineral dish each morning. My goats will usually eat 1/2 - 2/3 of the minerals right when I put them out, and they'll lick up the rest throughout the day. By evening chore time there's never any left.
Be careful how much sweet feed you give your boys. Male goats are very susceptible to urinary tract stones, and grain is often blamed as a primary contributing factor. My boys never get grain except as an occasional treat (like when giving shots). As long as your hay is high quality and they have plenty of natural browse there's usually no good reason to give daily grain to a wether. You'll find that wethers typically have no problem keeping weight, and in fact keeping them from becoming overweight as they mature is a more common issue.
MannaPro is a good mineral I believe. Free choice is the way to do minerals if you can. You have to put them somewhere dry where the goats can reach but the horses can't, and also where the goats can't poop in it. I don't do free choice because the only good place for my mineral feeder is outside, so I've figured out (through experimentation) exactly how much my goats eat every day and I put exactly that much in the mineral dish each morning. My goats will usually eat 1/2 - 2/3 of the minerals right when I put them out, and they'll lick up the rest throughout the day. By evening chore time there's never any left.
Be careful how much sweet feed you give your boys. Male goats are very susceptible to urinary tract stones, and grain is often blamed as a primary contributing factor. My boys never get grain except as an occasional treat (like when giving shots). As long as your hay is high quality and they have plenty of natural browse there's usually no good reason to give daily grain to a wether. You'll find that wethers typically have no problem keeping weight, and in fact keeping them from becoming overweight as they mature is a more common issue.