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Feeding and Housing

I first became interested in goats at a young age. We lived on a farm in Northamptonshire and my mother decided to purchase two of these interesting animals.

One was a Saanen - white - her name escapes me at the moment. The other was an Anglo  Nubian named Becca.

The goats were handmilked and I remember that one of them hated the noise of the stainless steel bucket. Replacing it with a plastic one ensured that milking time was then much more harmonious.

Fast forward to the present day and I now live with my family in Ireland. We have eleven goats : two Anglo Nubians, two Toggenburgs, one Saanen and the remainder are Nubian crosses.

For the first two years the majority of the goats were kept outside. They had two communal sheds, both with a door that we would close after dark once they had settled in for the night.

Unfortunately the weather in Ireland is not the best, particularly the high level of rainfall. Our goats hate the rain and strong winds - a combination of the two left them huddled in the sheds, reluctant to venture out at all. From the looks on their faces, I knew they blamed us for the weather and expected us to sort it out.   

This we did by building a brick shed with individual pens. For the last 6 years, the goats have spent every night in their pens.

After milking in the mornings, they are let out into the field where freshly cut branches await them.

If the rain is falling, or it is extremely windy, they remain in their pens and the branches are brought to them. Admittedly if it is horrendous weather, they have to make do with hay as venturing out to get “browse” when it is “bucketing down” is not my  idea of fun.

Often the rain will stop at some point during the day and then I will go out armed with my branch cutters and bring them back some sycamore,ash or some other non-evergreen type of tree branch to keep them happy.

Goats are not efficient grass trimmers. They prefer food higher up in trees. They will gradually destroy hedges either by eating, leaning against them and pushing, or a combination of the two.  

Goats will quite happily devour brambles and to watch them carefully pick off a blackberry whilst avoiding the nearby thorns is a wonderful sight to see.

Our goats do not eat growing nettles, but if I cut them and allow them to dry to produce a sort of “nettle hay” they will consume them with pleasure.

Nettles are very nutritious so nettle hay is a healthy addition to their diet.

In Winter, and all year for the milking goats, we feed a dry coarse mix to ensure they are getting all the nutrients they require.

The mix can vary but will usually include maize, rolled oats and molasses.

Hay, and sometimes barley straw is available at all times for the goats to nibble. 

Lily, Lucy and Bella in their pens.

My youngest son has returned from England with a skin rash around his neck and dry scaly skin on his arm.

The arm was itching as he is allergic to some of the evergreen branches in the fileds surrounding our house.

Instead of leaving it to clear up with the help of the soap products that we have, he kept scratching it and whilst in England he did not use the soap and it has gotten worse.

Now back in Ireland, he is showering twice a day using our shower cream and shampoo - sometimes just the latter as it is made of natural oils which are good for the skin and the hair - and the skin is becoming more moisturised and should hopefully return to its normal state in the next week.

It is difficult though to stop the scratching. I lathered up a plain bar of goats milk soap this morning and applied the bubbles to his neck and this helped soothe the itch.

Th sun is shining here again today so I’m off again to collect more branches for the goats. After milking we’ll let them out in the field and they love to see the branches strewn around. It doesn’t take them long to eat them all. They get more at lunchtime and more are left in their pens for when they return in the late afternoon.

We like to think our goats are happy goats.

The sun is shining here in the South East of Ireland. The goats are out browsing and we are taking advantage of the weather by cleaning out another of the goat pens.

Only 4 left to do.

Tomorrow promises to be another dry day so hopefully we’ll get another cleared out.

I have been learning the best way to make a compost heap with layers of “brown” then “green”  

Yesterday the lawns were mowed and provided a “green” layer. Today it is the turn of “brown”.

This afternoon, I will probably amend my website to improve the picture quality. We have recently introduced liquid soaps and foam baths, all made using goats milk, and I would like the pictures to better reflect how good the bottles look.

Penny, our newest goat kid is still being bottle fed so we’ll have to make sure she gets her “tea”. She is eating leaves now although we have to make sure they are low enough for her to reach. It won’t be long before she is fully weaned.