I'm looking forward to learning! It's a great community and I won't have to silently stalk y'all!
Looks like you got some great help! I hope you will stick around. We have a fun and supportive group here. I’m looking forward to seeing how your goats (and you) adjust to your new home.
Well, after 3 weeks, everyone is looking, sounding and acting MUCH better. They've been on water, hay, kelp and baking soda only. As we get closer to the 4-week mark, I'm wondering which mineral would be best. I just learned something new about sheep needing copper due to a post from Craigslist about Selenium 90 which made me think that maybe I should get a Se mineral, or maybe the Sweetlix would be better. Happy to hear any thoughts on the issue.
You can do soil samples on your pastures to see which minerals are in your soil. The minerals in the soil will show up in the pasture.
When you were in AZ you were also feeding alfalfa which is much higher in protein and calcium than grass hay.
Are these goats breeding or wethers and pets? You may not need more selenium if the does are not pregnant. I used to give a Bo-Se vaccination each year before breeding my dairy goats. I don't have the dairy herd anymore, but I do still vaccinate with Bo-Se before putting the ram in with the sheep flock. The ram gets a shot too.
Thanks for the help! We want to breed for milk, and had limited success in AZ before moving here. Now with the snow storm, I'm thankful that the doe isn't bred. They're improving, but not to the point where any surviving kids would thrive. Neither of my breeding pair (Buckle and Daffy) are interested. Daffy showed some signs of estrus this summer, but I didn't want kids in the dead of winter, so they stayed separate. I did put them together in Nov and they're still together, but neither is interested.
