Goat Diet

Goat Diet

Goats are ruminants and have four stomachs (like a
cow). Much of their energy indirectly comes from
breaking down cellulose from plant fibers into energy.
However, no mammal on earth secretes enzymes
necessary to digest cellulose. However, bacteria can
readily utilize this energy source. As such, goats (and
other ruminants) basically work like a huge
fermentation vat. They eat, and mechanically break
food down (cud chewing) and bacteria in their
digestive tract then actually break the food down into
nutrients the goat can use.

Goats are “browsers” meaning that they vastly prefer
to eat woody plants and shrubs but will eat a small
amount of grass. Cattle are “grazers” and pretty much
the opposite (mostly grass a small amount of browse).
If you want to get a goat to “mow your lawn,” you are
going to be disappointed. You are better off getting a
sheep for that. A goat will probably eat all your
ornamental bushes and peel the bark of your weeping
cherry tree BEFORE it gets to your lawn (if at all).
This feeding pattern means that it is possible and
even economically advantageous to graze goats and
cattle in the same area as they do not directly compete
with each other. Goats are quite happy to munch
down brambles, thorns, weeds, and even poison ivy,
that cows won’t touch.

The mainstay of our goats diet is hay. We feed a mix
of timothy and alfalfa hay. We usually buy 60 pound
square bales. We feed it in a steel "dual purpose"
feeder. Goats typically won't eat much hay off the
ground and at any rate if you feed it on the ground
they will quickly soil it.

Besides hay, we feed about a pound or so of grain
per day. We use Blue Seal "Caprine
Challenger."There are about a million schools of
thought here with feeding grain. These range from
feed alot of grain, to feeding none, to feeding pellets
without molasses, to feeding grain with molasses....
The majority opinion seems to center on a pound or
so a day for growing kids and does in production... so
we went with that.