We finally were able to secure 30 more round bales of mostly grass hay. The yearling girls have been seperated from the mature ewes to give them a little extra boost with some oats and beet bulp and such, while they don't have to fend off the big girls. That leaves 16 in one pen, 15 in another and the 6 boys that I have left.
Feeding the 'new' hay to the goats proved futile. They still haven't touched it and its day three. I have been feeding each twosome (I seperated all my goats into pairs) some goat chow to help with the crappier feed, but they refuse to eat the grass. I think they are spoiled.
The adult ewes were brought into the barn to feed and although they didn't appear to LIKE the new hay, they all had mouths full, even while they were baaaaing and complaining. They know better than to pass up any kind of food right?
The yearlings were all quite upset by this and as of 6am this morning they still hadn't eaten any of the hay. When I let them outside for the day I brought their hay from last night outside and they ate it, probably because they were so hungy, but the goats still won't touch it.
I think I"ve created monsters..........
A long time coming!
It has been a long time. Too long in fact. We lost access to our farm website and ebonwald website when WEBS.COM was closed by VistaPrint. ...
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Its always fun to switch it up a bit. I know some of you like to hear about my pigeons and cattle from time to time, as this IS a farm blog,... -
With my work load continuing to pile up, and less time to spend with the sheep, I am offering the following: My entire flock of BlueFaced ...
3 comments:
Do they know you're a sucker or what??? And don't be too jealous of our garden; Memorial Day is what we usually shoot for, too. This time of year is typically all mud; we just got lucky. :-)
Garrett, we have had terrible hay this winter, so my heart goes out to you with your dilemma. We have a choice of what they call Orchard Grass (timothy), Bermuda, or alfalfa, in hays here, but the grass hays have been loaded with molds, dust and brown, dead leaves. I have been told they have to get grass hays from Nevada now.
I have been thinking of going to mostly pelleted feeds - I found that the company I get alfalfa pellets from also makes pelleted timothy, so I've been trying that. You'd laugh if you saw our pens as I will have to clean alot of waste out of them as soon as it gets a bit warmer - much more than any other year to my recollection.
But the sheep haven't been too thrilled about the pelleted grass hay either.
I just know I've got to find a way to feed them so my money doesn't get blown away! :) Hang in there...
Hay is scarce here too. And the price of grass hay is just as high as the price of dairy quality alfalfa, so I opted for the alfalfa this year. My girls go crazy for that stuff! I am not supplementing them with grain because the protein level of the hay is 16-17%. This is a change from my usual poor quality grass hay and supplementing with corn and soybean meal. So I'm a little nervous about lambing this spring. Let's hope for rain this summer and a good hay crop.
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