Most goats brought home from a market lose condition in the first fortnight, and it is almost never the new feed that did it. It is the speed of the change. A rumen is a working population of microbes tuned to one diet, and swapping that diet overnight starves half of them.
So the schedule below starts a week before the animal is properly on it.
The first week
Ask the seller what the animal has been eating, and go home with a sack of it if you can. Then move across in steps, keeping the total quantity the same and changing only what it is made of.
| Days | Old feed | New feed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | 3 parts | 1 part |
| 3 and 4 | 2 parts | 2 parts |
| 5 and 6 | 1 part | 3 parts |
| 7 onwards | — | All new |
Hold the concentrate down for that week even if the animal is keen. A goat that has travelled, changed hands and changed sheds is already under load; a sudden bowl of grain on top of that is how you get bloat on day three.
What matters, in order
Green fodder, dry roughage, a small grain top-up, minerals, and clean water in front of it the whole time. In that order — the top-up is the part people obsess over and the part that changes least.
Green fodder: the base
Three to four kilos of fresh green fodder per adult per day, split across two feeds. Napier, jackfruit leaf, mulberry (kimbu), banana leaf and kolmi all do well here, and a mixture beats any single one of them.
- Cut it and let it wilt for an hour or two before feeding, particularly legumes. Fed straight off the plant, wet with rain or heavy dew, they ferment fast in the rumen and bloat follows.
- Never feed mouldy fodder, however little of it there is and however clean the rest of the sack looks.
- Go easy on ipil-ipil and other rich legumes — useful as part of a mix, poor as the whole of one.
- Chop coarse stems. A goat left to sort a pile wastes a third of it on the floor.
Dry roughage: the part that gets forgotten
Keep straw or dry hay in the rack at all times, alongside the green. It is not filler. Long dry fibre is what keeps the rumen turning over and the animal chewing its cud, and it is the buffer that stops a rich green feed or a grain top-up tipping into acid.
A goat that is not chewing the cud for a good part of the afternoon is telling you something.
Grain, sparingly
Two hundred to three hundred grams a day of a wheat bran and khesari or gram mix is enough for an adult in maintenance. More than that, on an animal that is neither growing nor being finished, does nothing useful and invites trouble.
- Split it across the two feeds rather than giving it in one go.
- Increase it by no more than 50 g a week. Nearly every rumen upset in a town yard traces back to a jump.
- Feed it after the fodder, not before, so the animal is not starting on an empty rumen.
- Keep the sack shut and dry. Damp bran grows mould within days in the monsoon.
Minerals and salt
Hang a mineral lick block in the pen and leave it there. A goat short of minerals licks soil, chews at walls and gnaws the woodwork — behaviour usually put down to boredom. It is cheaper to hang up a block than to work out afterwards which element was missing.
Water
Four to six litres a day for an adult, more in heat and a good deal more for a milking doe. Clean, always available, and changed twice a day rather than topped up.
This is the cheapest item on the list and the one that moves the needle most. A goat that drinks less eats less, and an animal that has gone off its water is often off it a full day before it goes off its feed.
A day that works
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 6:30 am | Fresh water. Look over each animal before it eats. |
| 7:00 am | Half the day's green fodder, then half the concentrate. |
| 11:00 am | Top up the dry roughage in the rack. Check the water. |
| 3:00 pm | Browsing or tethered grazing if you have it — an hour is plenty. |
| 5:00 pm | Second half of the fodder and the concentrate. |
| 6:30 pm | Fresh water again. Lift the wet bedding. Last look round. |
The clock matters less than the consistency. Goats are creatures of routine and they eat better on one: feeding at seven and five every day beats feeding well at random.
Rations by weight
Treat this as a starting point and let the animal correct you. Condition, not the table, is the measure.
| Live weight | Green fodder | Dry roughage | Concentrate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 to 20 kg | 2.0 kg | Free access | 150 g |
| 20 to 30 kg | 3.0 kg | Free access | 200 g |
| 30 to 40 kg | 4.0 kg | Free access | 250 to 300 g |
| Over 40 kg | 4.5 to 5.0 kg | Free access | 300 to 400 g |
Feeding towards Dashain or Qurbani
If you are finishing an animal for a date, work back six to eight weeks from it. That is long enough for the feed to show on the frame, and short enough that you are not paying for grain that turns into fat rather than weight.
- Raise the concentrate gradually to around 400 to 500 g a day over the first fortnight of that run, and keep the green fodder up rather than letting grain replace it.
- Weigh, or girth-tape, every two weeks and write it down. On sound feed you are looking for something in the region of 80 to 120 g a day.
- If the gain stalls while the animal is eating well, the answer is usually worms rather than the ration. Ask your vet before you buy more grain.
- Change nothing in the last week. An upset rumen three days before the festival is an expensive way to learn this.
What never goes in the trough
- Anything mouldy, sour or fermenting, including yesterday's leftovers scraped back in.
- Meat, fish, egg or cooked kitchen scraps of any kind.
- Bulk potato peel, onion and citrus waste.
- Wet, dew-soaked legume in quantity, or lush green cut straight after rain.
- A large, sudden grain feed after a day without one.
- Clippings from a lawnmower, which heat and ferment in the heap within the hour.
Reading the trough
The feed rack is the best diagnostic instrument you own. Learn what normal looks like and the abnormal announces itself.
An adult goat that has not eaten for twelve hours is not being fussy. Ring a vet.
- Left flank swelling hard and drum-tight — bloat. An emergency, not a wait-and-see.
- Loose, dark or foul dung — stop the concentrate, keep the roughage and water going, and get advice if it has not settled within a day.
- Eating well but losing condition — worms, until a vet tells you otherwise.
- Teeth grinding, standing hunched, no cud — pain somewhere. Do not wait for the morning.
Feeding a goat well is neither complicated nor expensive. It is a week of patience at the start, the same two feeds at the same two times, and a hand run along the ribs often enough to notice what the scales would only tell you a month later. How much of that feed the animal actually keeps is decided by where it sleeps — how to house a goat in a city yard covers the rest.
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