Prepping for Winter

[BlessedWithGoats]

Hello Everyone!

Winter is fast approaching. Some of you may remember the hard times I went through last winter, with liverflukes and pneumonia through the goat herd. I want to prepare as much as possible, and prevent these issues from happening again. So, does anyone have any specific things that they would recommend I check or do before winter?

Right now I am:

• Building a new house for the does, that will be more winterized than the previous one. It will have one side for the moms, and one for the babies.
• Leaving the boys where they are, but need to winterize the North side of their pen, which is where they will probably get the most cold/wind from.

I should probably have everyone on grain for the winter? I have been graining Leo, Latte, and the two new girls, Josie and Eliza. How much grain do you normally give your goats during the winter, and what type of feed do you recommend?

I also need to run fecals on the whole herd again, and see where any problems lie.

I don't plan on going into the Winter with as many bucks as I have currently. Lord Willing I will be keeping Leo, and he will be the buck I use for breeding, but I have three others that I potentially will sell/slaughter. They are all bucks though. Has anyone eaten buck, or have you only had goat when they had been wethers? Will the meat taste bad if they are slaughtered as bucks?

Please feel free to post with any tips or advice you have for me going into this winter! We live in an area where we get much snow and cold.

 

[babsbag]

I would do the pneumonia vaccine. The only goats in my herd that cough or have snotty noses are new ones that I bought that have not been vaccinated. I swear by it.

I have never eaten bucks, only wethers and I have no liver flukes in my area so not much help with that either. I feed alfalfa year round and grain to the girls on the milk stand. I will be feeding alfalfa pellets free choice this year to the does when I dry them off, in addition to the hay. Boys don't get grain but if I were going to feed them I would use a pellet goat feed with added ammonium chloride. You might top dress the feed with Manna Pro Goat Balancer or Calf Manna for the winter.

 

[BlessedWithGoats]

How much alfalfa do you give them?

I think I can get alfalfa pellets, and I used to be able to get beet pulp too, but will have to see if I still can.

 

[Hens and Roos]

We give everyone(bucks and does) a mix of 17% goat grain, beet pellets and alfalfa pellets that we can get in our area. We feed am and pm. Of course right now the does in milk get more and everyone else eats from shared pans.

Buck side gets 3 pans(1/2 cup per pan per feeding) we have total of 5 boys right now. Going into winter our plan is to only have 2 bucks(Chester and Granite)

Does side gets 4 pans(1/2 cup per pan per feeding) this is for the young ones- we have 10 that share. Trying to decided how many we will keep.....

In winter we bump up the amount and add a few more pans on the doe side(trying to remember what we gave this past winter- maybe 1 cup per pan per feeding and adjusted as needed).

We also feed alfalfa hay year round plus some grassy hay. They get this free choice

We have started using the pneumonia vaccine as of this year and will see how that works @babsbag told us about it.

We check fecals for each goat- and worm as needed.

Did your vet say if there is a good test to check for liver flukes?

 

[BlessedWithGoats]

Not that I recall, but I have run fecals on them. TTh eggs look similar to Barberpole eggs, so are hard for me to distinguish.


Thank you both for the info, and if you think of anything else, your input is appreciated!