I meant BOSS....black oil sunflower seeds! I do have BOSE speakers in my office....
I have no clue about the purebred goat industry. I just read what helmstead writes, and all the stuff she has to do to keep her goats going, and she once stated that modern goats aren't as hardy as they were years ago. I hope I paraphrased that correctly, if not, my apologies, Kate. That statement helped me understand why, as a kid, we had very healthy and productive animals without a single pharmaceutical and no access to much variety in their feed. We did, now that I think of it, get produce scraps from the local grocery once a week through the long Maine winters, and our goats and meat rabbits got lots of good stuff from these boxes. That probably helped.
And the farmers still put manure on their fields, rotated crops, rested fields with green manure crops, and GM and Round-up ready were phrases that hadn't been coined yet.
The few people with goats generally let them roam free in the very rural areas, browsing at will. They were very hardy critters, natural selection was at work!
I am not up on modern goat breeding, but I have been deeply involved in other animal worlds, and know that when you breed for specific traits, it is at a price.....and the cost is usually HUGE. The judges at the shows reward extremes, and it doesn't matter that the animal cannot function normally.....they just have to remain healthy enough long enough to pick up that ribbon, usually while still a juvenile. So if they break down in young or mid-adulthood, who cares? We have the traits we were going for, so what if the animal can hardly stay alive long enough to reproduce. OK, I am exaggerating now, so note the sarcasm!
In the horse world, the ones that win at conformation are not the ones who win at performance. That is just wrong, imo.
I want hardy goats who can reproduce and give a reasonable amount of milk and meat, I don't need the quickest weight gain, or the huge amounts of milk per goat, or the longest lactation. I am not making my living at this, it is for me and my family. So my philosophy is not mainstream, and my feeding program will not be sufficient for many of the goats out there. So do your own research and experiment with care and close watchfulness if you choose to make changes. What is good for one individual may not be ideal for the next.
