EHAL Magazine May 2019

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

GOAT NUTRITION – SIMPLE OR COMPLICATED?

BY DR. HARRY ANDERSON

Goat nutrition has long been depicted as very simple and the old cartoons of a billy goat eating a tin can while standing on a garbage heap did not make it look complicated. In reality, goat nutrition can be rather simple as most goat breeds have developed in very harsh condition and have adapted to be able to reproduce gesand grow with limited resources. This has made them useful in arid and semi-arid environments. If you just want to get by with limited resources and management then goat nutrition seems simple. To me the goat is a very responsive animal to good nutrition that involves more than simple forage and a bit of mineral. The goat (all breeds) is simply a small ruminant and if we manage the nutritional program their reproduction and growth can be dramatically improved as compared to the norm. Once the health and parasite program is well managed, what are some of the simple, yet complex things we can do to dramatically improve the performance of goats. We now have a considerable amount of experience and history in improving both fertility and growth

Everything Horses and Livestock® | May 2019 | EHALmagazine.com 38