Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Roughage is highly fibrous plant material. It provides energy for milkers and young goats and
gives added energy to female goats in late stages of pregnancy. When broken down, roughage
provides a goat with important nutrients. Goats get this needed roughage when they browse
the brush and bushes in a pasture, gobble up weeds, or eat green twigs and bark from the
trees. They may get it from grass clippings, dry cornstalks (called corn stover) or turnips,
parsnips, and carrots. You usually can obtain beet pulp or citrus pulp, also good roughage,
from the feed store. Goats can get roughage from silage (corn and hay plants allowed to fer-
ment in a silo). Many goats get daily roughage in the form of quality hay.
Green pasture
An exclusively lush pasture (green forage) can be healthy for your goats, with some limita-
tions. Green forage generally consists of grass and succulent plants containing a lot of water;
this means it contains fewer minerals than dry food. In order to get enough minerals, your
goat has to eat an abundance of green forage but becomes satiated long before it has con-
sumed enough nutrients and minerals. For this reason, green forage does not provide all the
requirements of a healthy goat diet, and it is not desirable to raise goats on green pasture
alone. A lush pasture diet can cause bloat if your goats consume enough of it.
One solution is to restrict the time your goats remain in the green pasture. However, it will be
difficult to assess how much they are eating or how much green forage they are getting as a
percentage of their diet. Another way to give green forage is to do it by confinement feeding,
sometimes called soiling. The goat keeper cuts roughage from the pasture and brings it into a
confined space to feed the goats. This way, the amount fed to the goats can be monitored.
A WORD OF CAUTION ABOUT GRASS CLIPPINGS
If you are feeding your goats grass clippings from your lawn, consider the fertilizer and weed
killer content in the grass. Fertilizer is never a good thing to feed to goats, and weed killers
are toxic. If you do not use fertilizers and weed killers, you can feed grass clippings to the
goats.
Mixed pasture
Pasture filled with a variety of grasses, weeds, brush, and woody plants is ideal for your goats.
This is the type of pasture referred to when goat owners talk about natural, or free-range,
