Corn is a hot feed. You are just asking for major rumen issues and possible death. Alfalfa hay is fine. Why not feed the same feed you fed the others?
Milk protocols for groups of kids?
Hi all, we have our second set of kid goats (week old) coming next month. 20 head.
Last year we did 1 bag of replacer/kid until weaning and did okay. Weaned onto (good) hay only and kids ended up sort of lanky and weird. Not sure which part was lacking.
This year I was doing 1L/kid/day and the math is bringing it to 1 bag every 2 weeks? Am I doing something wrong? That would be almost $600 in replacer per kid vs the $90/kid from last year.
Side note... I started medicated calf creep at 1 week old with our mother raised babies and they are MASSIVE so I'm content with that experiment. Looking to wean them onto straight corn and alfalfa hay this year I think.
Thoughts?
Last year we did 1 bag of replacer/kid until weaning and did okay. Weaned onto (good) hay only and kids ended up sort of lanky and weird. Not sure which part was lacking.
This year I was doing 1L/kid/day and the math is bringing it to 1 bag every 2 weeks? Am I doing something wrong? That would be almost $600 in replacer per kid vs the $90/kid from last year.
Side note... I started medicated calf creep at 1 week old with our mother raised babies and they are MASSIVE so I'm content with that experiment. Looking to wean them onto straight corn and alfalfa hay this year I think.
Thoughts?
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
The kids I have raised on a bottle get 20-30 oz of milk twice a day from weeks 3-8 so 1 liter per day seems maybe a little on the low side. I would not put them on corn. Maybe just alfalfa hay or supplement with a good dairy pellet
My bottle kids get at least 3 pints (1.4 liters) a day to grow well, so I can see why your kids last year didn’t grow well. Where do you live? It may be slightly more economical to just feed cow milk from the grocery store than to buy replacer.
Straight corn is a no, no.
Thanks guys, also it turns out my milk math was off so disregard that. I had my wife (she's the clever one) do it for me and we mixed up the numbers while texting lol
We did 1L/day this winter and had no problems, split into two 500ml feeds. But that was with whole cows milk instead of replacer. I think you guys are right that 1.5L or replacer would be better if we go with that.
We had a group of 4 bottle bucks just to test. We also weaned them onto corn and have had no problems with it, they're almost the size of the mother raised babies. These are terminal kids at 12 weeks now, going to market for easter. The keeper doelings get an alfalfa/beetpulp/corn mix. Everyone gets unlimited hay, and they get their grain in the mornings.
Part of the reason I switched to just corn is from speaking to a few other producers who do just corn or 50%corn/pellets. One of them does straw for fibre, one does alfalfa, and one does grass hay.
We did 1L/day this winter and had no problems, split into two 500ml feeds. But that was with whole cows milk instead of replacer. I think you guys are right that 1.5L or replacer would be better if we go with that.
We had a group of 4 bottle bucks just to test. We also weaned them onto corn and have had no problems with it, they're almost the size of the mother raised babies. These are terminal kids at 12 weeks now, going to market for easter. The keeper doelings get an alfalfa/beetpulp/corn mix. Everyone gets unlimited hay, and they get their grain in the mornings.
Part of the reason I switched to just corn is from speaking to a few other producers who do just corn or 50%corn/pellets. One of them does straw for fibre, one does alfalfa, and one does grass hay.
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
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