Mix It Up

Good grain is important for goats.  For my goats specificially, Charlotte needs a quality daily ration because she is producing a ton of milk (not a ton literally, but 1/2- 3/4 gallon a day!).  And Edna and Elly May are growing kids, so they need a good feed too.  Feeding my goats a high quality, natural grain ration is important to me because I am drinking what I put into the goats!  No GMO's allowed.  I had begun feeding Edna the Texas Naturals Sheep & Goat feed before I got the other goats.  However, Charlotte and Elly May had been eating a special homemade mix that I thought would be fun to try.  I wrote down the recipe when I picked them up and I was able to find all of the "ingredients" at Tractor Supply and the local feed mill.

The mixture is half barley and half oats with a few other things.  The originally recipe made 100+ pounds of feed, but I only wanted to make about a third of that to try it out.  We decided to use 17 pounds from each of the 50 pound barley and oat bags.  17 pounds filled up a 3 gallon bucket to the brim.  We also found out that oats and barley weigh about a pound per our scoop.  (Wonder how we got these specific amounts?  The bathroom scale.  We really need to invest in a "barn" scale!)

Here is the oat bag (I didn't get a picture of the barley bag, it was just plain brown!).

The bucket of barley.

 We also added about a scoop of BOSS (Black Oil Sunflower Seeds).

 A little bit o' beet pulp...

 

 And a cup or two of molasses drizzled over the mixture.

 The feed was mixed in a wheel barrel with a hoe.

In the end, there was about 40 pounds of feed.  It is being stored in a cow lick tub that has a snap-on lid.  It seemed a tad sticky, so next time I might reduce the molasses.

 The grain mixture was well received by the kids!  (Charlotte's appetite is still a little off due to the stress of moving.  She is eating a little over half of what she should be eating.)

Yum! Yum!