Thinning the Herd Part 2...and laying the Fodder Foundations...

So...Just before Christmas - actually just before the goats started kidding - I had found FODDER!!!  Oh yes...a miracle of sorts.  It would take nearly all of my need for bagged, processed, pelleted feeds out of the equation. BUT...it would also require some time and effort...and I was still running low on that...

I sat down, and I looked at things long and hard.  I had spent the prior year building my herd of goats up.  We had saanens, nubians, mini-nubians, and a small group of boers who had been painstakingly searched out and located to be CAE negative (which is hard to do around here with boer goats)....I also have a close friend and neighbor down the road half a mile whose herd seriously came from mine...and it was about to grow...

She had a good portion of our original dwarf goats, she also became headquarters for the mini-nubians.  Shuffle shuffle, goats to her place...that way we keep our husbands guessing as to how many goats we each really and truly have right? But what that did in reality was put the herd into groups by size.  Big goats here, littler goats there.  So much easier than dealing with the size difference daily here...adjusting stuff like the milk stand and what not...plus she already had the mini-buck...cool deal...a little easier...

Next came the boer goats...I had bottle raised all three, driven to El Campo for 2, patiently waited the birth of one, and I REALLY had to think about this...I had gotten them under the pretense of raising kids for meat.  Nothing else right?  But really...it's harder to do, they aren't as meaty that's for sure...but really I say...why was I raising a separate breed for meat again when I knew good and well my dairy goats would give me edible buck kids?  UGH!  It was my heart...I have a hard time contemplating eating a dairy kid...

We put the cross bred bucks in the freezer - notice the fellow with the horns?  Yup, I had left them on purpose because I KNEW it would drive me nuts having one with horns around and it did...so the decision was made.  All goat bound for Camp Kenmore would keep their horns...now, see the other fellow?  Yup...Jack, Chrissy, and Janet (the Three's Company Boer Trio) were listed and sold....

It was hard - but now I had the extra time I was looking for.  I spend a good few hours each day doing health checks and such.  The old routine was one breed a day each day of the week - saanen, nubian, mini-nubian, boer, horses, other stuff....eyelids checked for bright red healthy color, hoofs checked for funky issues and picked clean, pens mucked and so on...Now I had 3 full days of no health checks I could devote to research!

I started reading on line, found a group on facebook devoted to fodder and found another few places I hope to share tomorrow where I gathered a wealth of info as well.  Now that we are 2 full months into the fodder program, it doesn't add as much time to my day as it did at first.  Remember, in the beginning, there is research to be done and questions to be asked in a much greater volume than as time goes on.  That takes up a huge portion of your day!  Then you have the initial trials and test runs and system set up and such...I can't tell you how many hours I spent just staring at it willing it to grow LOL....Lots of hours go into staring at it to see what it's doing...LOTS! 

To have a good foundation under you when switching to fodder you need to know what it is, how to produce it, how to feed it, be ready for the challenges that come with it (and there are challenges that will come your way) and how to make it work for YOU!  The last part is the most important - fodder is not for everyone.  It takes a certain amount of human involvement beyond scooping feed from a bag each day.  Plan to spend at least an hour extra a day, each day, for the first few weeks tweaking things.  Maybe even more - if you are like me and have the constant need to go pet it and encourage plan to spend several hours a day watching it grow...

So, stay tuned once again...tomorrow we will begin the fodder journey for real!