Indoor Feed Management
When feeding animals in a housed barn situation, this needs to be managed carefully to ensure that all animals have equal access to feed and that feed quality and hygiene is maintained. This section explains this process in more detail.
Feed Access:
It is important to ensure your housing barn has sufficient feed space for the number of animals contained in it. Minimum requirements are currently set at 330mm per adult goat but allowing more space per animal than this reduces competition for feed and typically results in higher milk production per doe. Feed must also be spread evenly along the feed area to avoid animals fighting to get to the feed.
Throughout the day the feed needs to be pushed up to the goats to ensure they can reach it. Pushing it up also encourages the goats to come back to feed, thereby increasing their consumption and lifting milk production. This push up process can be done manually by foot or broom, with a wheel attached to a farm vehicle or if your shed setup and budget allows, a feed pushing robot. Feed pushing robots have the advantage of being set to run at various times during the day and night, regardless of whether you are there or not. They can also be set to push closer to the feed rail with each passing sweep. They do however, require your lane to be free of obstacles and to be docked where the goats can't reach the charging cables.
Feed that needs pushing up in order for goats to reach it.
Feed being pushed up with a rotating tyre.
Feed being pushed up with a robot pusher.
Pushing up feed not only encourages goats to eat more, it also reduces other problems such as goats squeezing themselves out of the pens in an effort to reach the tastiest bits.
Feed Quality:
The grass brought into the goats should be clean (not contaminated with soil or mud) and well cut (not beaten to a mush as a result of poor collection methods). Any uneaten feed must be scraped away on a daily basis to avoid bacteria and mycotoxins building up in the feed which will lead to health issues (and potentially death) in the goats. Typically removing the uneaten feed is done early in the day and should definitely be done prior to the new day's feed being put out.
Most dairy goat units have some dry stock that uneaten feed can be fed out to, meaning nothing gets wasted.
It is good practice to scrape down the centre of the feedlane and to push this to your waste pile before pushing out the uneaten feed. This means dirt and stones dragged into the lane on vehicle wheels does not end up contaminating your pushout feed.
Scraping the centre of the lane to the waste pile reduces contamination of the pushout feed and results in a cleaner lane ready for the fresh feed.
When pushing out the feed, keep a few inches from the base board to avoid damaging the rails - gathered feed will act as a broom and sweep clean to the edges.
Feeding pushout on a daily basis to other stock is an effective way to utilise uneaten feed. Pushout should be stored on a sealed surface and removed to the feedout wagon (or fed out) as soon as possible to reduce the chance of lechates developing.
Pushout feed will be a combination of fresh grass, concentrates and/or silage. Whilst you can feed whole grain maize to your goats, if it is part of your pushout feed you may wish to consider using kibbled or cracked maize so that any dairy stock consuming it can digest it. Fpr large volumes of pushout, a feedout wagon is effective. Depending on what machinery is available, smaller amounts of pushout can be fed directly to the stock with a front loader bucket.
Feed Equipment:
Mixer Wagons:
Mixer wagons are an effective option for goat diets as it means the forage is chopped small which aids digestion and reduces feed lost by being dragged into the pen. It also means that all the components get mixed evenly and prevents the goats from picking through their feed and only eating ‘the good bits’. We choose to buy our minerals free-flow and to include them as part of the mixer wagon ration rather than having them included as part of a pellet. This option does mean that some of the minerals are ‘lost’ in pushed out feed, but in the long run is still cheaper than pellet options and gives us the ability to keep the per goat mineral rations consistent when increasing or decreasing concentrate rations.
Cut and Carry Equipment:
A typical cut and carry system will use a combination of a front mower and a side delivery feedout wagon. Not using this combination allows for the grass to be cut and left to wilt before being picked up later and fed to the goats which reduces moisture levels in the barn and increases the amount of dry matter intake.This benefit is laargely outweighed by the fact that this system requires two passes of the paddock (one to cut and another to pickup) which is time consuming and increases the risk of pasture damage, and soil compaction in gateways. In addition to this, unless you are going to hook and unhook attachments every time you need to switch from one to the other, you need two tractors to complete the same job as you would with a front mower and wagon combo.
