Re: Keeping weight on a heavy milker - how?


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Posted by Vicki McGaugh on May 02, 2001 at 16:48:06:

In Reply to: Keeping weight on a heavy milker - how? posted by Nat on May 02, 2001 at 13:06:37:

Though Toggs are supposed to be one of the smaller breeds, most of my friends Toggs are every bit as big as my Nubians. And a Nubian at my house gets 2 pounds of grain per day just for body maintenance. Then twice a day on the milk stand they receive about 1 pound of milk for every 4 pounds they milk. Most all of my milkers receive 4 pounds of grain each day, with a few does consuming 5. This is in addition to browse, grass hay, and when I really need the milk we also feed the chopped Alfalfa (US Alfalfa). I feed this Alfalfa year round to my bucks, since their pen is mostly pine needles. I am not a fan of many of the rumen by pass proteins, most come from urea and animal by products. Now we do feed Diamond V Yeast to our just fresh does, helps them quickly go from little grain, to lots of grain and helps them assimilate all that grain. Your girl is simply not getting enough calories, and as with anything with goats, increase her amount of calories very slowly. Be certain that your grain does not contain any animal products period (much to our chagrin our custom mix has had a change of minerals and you guessed it animal fat in them :( Watch your protein, they need just a moderate amount of protein to milk, certainly not the 17%+ that you hear some folks feeding, save that for your aggressively growing kids. You may also want to keep baking soda out for your girls all the time, helps keep the rumen sweet. And as always this is just my opinion :) Vicki


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