The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Goats => Topic started by: langdon on February 09, 2010, 08:43:32 pm
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i recall a while ago some of you telling me to throw the odd branch or two into
the goats for them to nibble on, well ive gone over the top on this one!!
when i take shep out for a walk up the lane 1 half mile, the odd lorry
that delivers to the dairy farm beside us, they are so huge they sometimes
take the top branches of the trees.
well you know what im going to say next.
yep i drag them all the way back home!!!!! just for my girls
you can imagine the looks i get of people driving past,
at the best of time the branches are out in the middle of the lane, its so narrow.
any way my mantra- is waste not want not.
milly and molly love them :D :goat:
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when I walk home from work (when its light enough for 2 hours on winding country lanes!) I collect all sorts... ivy, dandelions etc. And from the garden at work.
What sort of trees are they? Ours love willow
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I have lost count of how many branches I have carried for the goats over the years. Where I lived before, I only had a small paddock for the 6 goats I had, so every night I would go along the lanes and collect two big sacks full to keep them going the next day. They ate the branches, leaves, everything.
The goats I have now, only seem to want leaves, and leave the branches - the other goats loved to strip the bark off the willow, before eating the bare branch too.
Willow and ash are favourites, and they love the bay willow herb, the long plant with red flowers, that often grows on railway bankings. I am fortunate that we have plenty of tracks, and also a railway, with a continuous supply of trees and plants for the goats. On the railway bank is a lot of wild raspberry and red currant bushes ......so collect them too. I think a bird must have carried seeds from our garden up there, so they are really my bushes, and I am entitled to pick them!!