How do you feed mineral?

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NachoFarm

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So I have a few feeding questions, interspersed with housing questions. We have three Gotland/Finn crosses and two Alpine/Lamancha crosses. We plan on having two of the adult ewes pregnant over the winter as well as the goats. Right now they share a barn which has free access to the pasture. The plan for next year is to build a sheep house in the centre of our pasture and then rotate their grazing around it in a pie shaped pattern, but finances are tapped out this year so we'd like them to share the barn until next spring. The goats are in a stall overnight so they don't get into trouble, ask me how many times I've come in in the morning to find they'd broken out of their stall and busted through the gate to the hay loft...honestly. :rolleyes: We talked to a nutritionist about mineral and they suggested offering all of them sheep mineral since getting a bag of each would last us forever since we only have five animals. We're also going to offer salt. As well we bought the biggest bag of DE I've ever seen and we plan on mixing it in with the chicken feed for the birds (who also share the barn for that matter) but I'm unsure how to offer that to the goats and sheep as they don't eat grain. So, my questions...

1. Does the housing situation pose any problems? Should we plan to have them in a sheep house in the pasture before they lamb so I don't have animals birthing all over the barn?
2. Since both goats are going to kid in the spring do I need to separate them from each other?
3. How do you offer mineral for a group of animals? Do I just set up buckets of each salt and mineral in the barn?
4. Any ideas of how to get DE into the goats and sheep in the right amounts for worming?
 
The main problem I see here is that goats need a loose mineral containing quite a bit of copper, but too much copper is very bad for sheep. So if you could seperate them during feeding & top dress with their loose minerals you might be able to get away with keeping them together. Otherwise, it could get tough making sure they get the right minerals they need.
 
The sheep mineral we're using has cheleted copper in it. I tried to post the info and ingredients of the mix on here but it wouldn't let me. Although looking at it now the amounts are so different...519 mg/kg for goats versus 63 mg/kg for the sheep mix. I can't really top dress their food because they don't eat grain. Can I wait until the end of the day to offer loose mineral to both when they're seperated, or do they need to have access all day?
 
If I were you, I would give them their minerals at night when they're separated. When you comingle them in the morning, take up both minerals to make sure the goats don't eat the sheep mineral and become deficient in anything. I also wouldn't offer any salt--they'll eat too much of that and not enough of the mineral.
 
I only have 6 goats and I'll go through a 25 pound bag of minerals in a month or so. They *may* not last as long as you think.

They definitely need different minerals for each type.
 
Really? No salt? I've never heard that before. Don't they just take what they feel they require?
 
There should be salt in the loose minerals. If you offer more salt one the side, say a salt block, they'll spend most of the sime eating just the salt and wont eat the minerals to get the salt in those. I've also heard this with people putting out baking soda all the time, they'll eat that to get their salt instead of the minerals.

Eta: Same goes for them having access to sheep minerals. They might eat that more then the goat minerals with the needed copper amounts in it.
 
We do not feed mineral-- as per Pipestone's suggestions.. Free choice salt, Iodine and Se is all they need.
 
If you're separating them at night anyway, I would go with what SheepGirl suggested and supply the minerals at night. No extra salt.
 
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