The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Goats => Topic started by: angie on April 08, 2020, 01:56:13 pm
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Hi, can anyone recommend how much garlic I can add to gg feed, does anyone give it to their milkers?
Also have a dam that is becoming stiff so am going to try her on turmeric, anyone able to advise on dosage please?
Many thanks for reading
Angie
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I assume garlic will make the milk smell or taste different? Turmeric - no idea. We eat half a tea spoon with a teaspoon of honey each every day recently - but obviously we are humans lol
Turmeric wont kill though - might just make them more golden than they already are lol
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My goats used to get a sprinkling of garlic granules onto their food, but it had to be hidden with a dash of virgin olive oil.... they did not like it. So I haven't fed it to them in a while. At the levels I used it it did not taint the milk. (Cabbage and turnips etc - totally different story though...).
Wrt stiffness - how old are your goats and are they CAE negative? If you don't know or haven't had them tested I would advise to get them blood tested asap (don't know if vet does it at the moment, may not be classed as emergency...).
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Thank you for your reply Anke, cae negative herd. She's eight and a bit stiff depending on the weather.
The garlic is mainly for the boys to see if it makes a difference to repelling biting insects, don't want to keep using spot on at this time of the year unless I really need to as we have a problem with horse flies later in the year so would have to keep treating them with it longer than I would like to.
Kind regards
Angie
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If the garlic is for the boys then of course no problems wrt milk tainting. I would just try it - depends a bit on what else they get and how keen they are on it. I had a goat that would eat garlic out of my hand (of course she thought it was a treat!), but she also was troubled by flies badly. None of my homebred goats have ever shown that.
As to joint stuff for the older goat - there is stuff in the horsey section at the feeds merchant which I know some people swear by.
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My goats were eating wild welsh onions and wild garlic. But I wasn't milking them then.
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My goats were eating wild welsh onions and wild garlic. But I wasn't milking them then.
The fresh stuff is quite different, the dried garlic granules you can buy for horses are quite potent. And if the goats would eat a lot of the wild stuff, I think the milk could easily get tainted as well.