New to goats feed question

[Amaggio]

Hi everyone, so I have a friend who wants two pygmy goats and wishes me to house them. I have also been planning on adding Nigerian Dwarf goats to my farm and thought it would be a good idea to get them all at the same time so I can have a decent size herd to start and no one will get lonely. However, I have yet to find information as to whether a pygmy and a Nigerian goats can be housed together due to their different dietary needs. I have 9.6 acres and plan on moving them around the property to browse on forage and have hay available at all times along with loose minerals. It's the hay part I'm not so sure about. Can I feed them both a hay mix, such as a timothy/alfalfa blend, and then give BOSS and grains as needed to the Nigerians to supplement their dietary needs while they are in milk? Or should I only give them non-alfalfa hay and separately feed the dairy goats something like alfalfa pellets along with their grains to supplement? If I left two separate feeding stations one with alfalfa and one with other hay do I need to worry the pygmy goats may eat too much alfalfa and OD on it. Or would it be better to keep the two separate completely?

PS: My local feed store sells only a few types of hay bales and more options like pellet/cube/chopped bags of hay. They're mainly for horses I think, as this area has a lot of horse stables, but can goats eat these too? The company says they can but I don't trust that it's fortified for a goat's diet, just like sometimes you find rabbit pictures on small animal hay even though it isn't fortified for rabbits. I'm not very confident in my knowledge and would appreciate any insight. Thank you

 

[Alaskan]

Hi everyone, so I have a friend who wants two pygmy goats and wishes me to house them. I have also been planning on adding Nigerian Dwarf goats to my farm and thought it would be a good idea to get them all at the same time so I can have a decent size herd to start and no one will get lonely. However, I have yet to find information as to whether a pygmy and a Nigerian goats can be housed together due to their different dietary needs. I have 9.6 acres and plan on moving them around the property to browse on forage and have hay available at all times along with loose minerals. It's the hay part I'm not so sure about. Can I feed them both a hay mix, such as a timothy/alfalfa blend, and then give BOSS and grains as needed to the Nigerians to supplement their dietary needs while they are in milk? Or should I only give them non-alfalfa hay and separately feed the dairy goats something like alfalfa pellets along with their grains to supplement? If I left two separate feeding stations one with alfalfa and one with other hay do I need to worry the pygmy goats may eat too much alfalfa and OD on it. Or would it be better to keep the two separate completely?

PS: My local feed store sells only a few types of hay bales and more options like pellet/cube/chopped bags of hay. They're mainly for horses I think, as this area has a lot of horse stables, but can goats eat these too? The company says they can but I don't trust that it's fortified for a goat's diet, just like sometimes you find rabbit pictures on small animal hay even though it isn't fortified for rabbits. I'm not very confident in my knowledge and would appreciate any insight. Thank you

It would be easy to house them together...

Feed them all like non production animals... and then, when you milk, the goat on the milk stand gets a bunch of good stuff.

I don't think Nigerians are so high production that they would need more.

A super high producing milk goat would need more high nutrition feed, than just the 2 feeds "meals" at milk time.

 

[Amaggio]

Thank you for the reply!