From the Thrifty Homesteader:
From day one, I always wanted to raise my goats naturally, so after having a multitude of problems in my first few years, I was shocked to discover that it would be impossible to really raise goats "naturally" on my farm in Illinois! Why?
Goats are not native to this continent! We have taken browsers and tried to turn them into grazers. Goats are from the desert, where there is no grass. They have gone through time eating brush, small trees, and weeds. This is why goats have two big problems in most parts of North America:
Mineral deficiencies -- grass has far less minerals than brush, trees, and weeds, so goats have much greater mineral needs than sheep and cattle. We raised cattle for about 12 years, and we raised sheep for 21, and I admit that they have gone months sometimes without minerals, and they did fine. If you do that with goats, you will see serious problems.
Parasites -- worm larvae live on the lower 4 inches of grass, which goats never eat in their natural environment. This is why sheep and cattle have better parasite resistance than goats. They have been eating off the ground forever because they are grazers.
This is why you can put sheep and cattle out on the pasture and forget about them (almost). The pasture provides what they need, and it's not so bad that they are eating a little worm larvae on the grass. (Rotational grazing is still important for cattle and sheep.)
And as if the goat's diet is not bad enough, many of us have well water pumped up from 100 feet below the ground. Water from deep wells tends to be high in minerals like sulfur and iron, which can bind with other minerals, making them unavailable to the goat. Goats in nature would only drink rainwater, which has no added minerals.
I started my goat journey back in 2002 thinking that I was not going to feed my goats grain because it wasn't natural for goats -- but I wound up feeding them grass, which wasn't natural for them, and giving them water that wasn't natural for any critter! (We eventually spent $2000 on a water treatment system.)
It seems like it should be easy to raise your goats naturally, but in most parts of North America, that does not mean simply putting them out in the pasture and forgetting about them. Mother Nature can't give them what they need here.
But I can't just give someone else our "recipe" for success because every farm is different. We all have different pastures, different water, and different genetics. If my friend four miles away had supplemented her goats with copper like I did, she would have killed her goats with copper toxicity because they had city water, which had no copper antagonists.
Eventually I learned about various mineral deficiencies and how to provide a diet that was as natural as possible, considering where I'm located. If you've been following me for long, you know that I seriously love learning about goat nutrition.
So, I created a course that gives you all the details you need to know about pasture, browse, hay, goat feed, minerals mixes, as well as how to recognize and treat deficiencies in minerals, including selenium, copper, zinc, iodine, and more, plus vitamins. You'll also learn about mineral feeders, hay feeders, water, buying hay, and how to supplement with individual minerals when you spot a deficiency.
You can purchase lifetime access to the course for 20% off the full price until Tuesday night. The discount should already be applied when you click that link, but just in case it's not, use the coupon code SPRING24 to get 20% off.
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