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MOW YOUR PASTURES

Goats are not pasture animals. Because they are very susceptible to Haemonchus contortus (barberpole stomach worm) infection, they are foragers/browsers   like deer. Goats  need to eat "from the top down," eating weeds and leaves, to avoid stomach worms that exist at ground level.

Goats have a very fast 11 to 15 hour rumen passage rate.  The net venation structure of the leaf is much easier for the goat to break down and digest than grass blades which have a parallel vein structure.   Lignin is necessary to hold the grass blade up to receive sunlight, but it isn't easily digested by goats.   Leaves are attached to small stems that fall out from the main stem of a tree or brush don't require the amount of lignin that grass blades need.

The number of people who proudly tell me how tall their pastures are and therefore how much they have for their goats to eat is an indication of widespread misinformation about goats, how they live, and how they survive.

Apparently goat raisers who  have pasture but lack forage/browse think they can offer tall grasses to their goats and keep them from contacting stomach worms. Not so. Goats  will go to ground level for the newest and most tender plant material, right where the worms are. Unless there are seed heads on the tall grasses, goats won't eat them. As grasses grow taller, they become  less digestible to goats.

Pastures that have tall grasses tend to stay wet at ground level, increasing the exposure to worms, pasteurella, and other organisms. Goats are dry-land animals.   WET = WORMS.   Mow your pastures to about 8 inches high  or shorter, if the density of the plant material is so great that it blocks out the sun.  Sun must be able to reach the ground to dry it out so that  the worm population is hopefully reduced.

Years ago during an  unusually wet spring when I lived in  West Texas, the  goats were enjoying the  green pastures.     I allowed one pasture containing 15 Tennessee Meat Goat™ bucks to stay high enough to cover their heads. Every one of them contracted pasteurella pneumonia, even though I had vaccinated against it. I treated them and they appeared to get well, but the problem became chronic. Over the next 18 months,  each of them slowly declined in health  despite every effort I made and died. I wasn't sure what was happening. I verified it wasn't worms. My vet necropsied the last one at GoatCamp™ that year and discovered pasteurella abscesses in his lungs. Because I didn't mow the tall grasses, the ground never dried out, setting up conditions that resulted in pasteurella pneumonia abscesses that killed 15 top-quality Tennessee Meat Goat™ bucks. An expensive loss and my fault.

Improper management is almost always the cause of problems with goats. Analyze every decision you make before you put it into effect.  The Law of Unintended Consequences is a hard teacher.

Suzanne W. Gasparotto    ONION CREEK RANCH    9.1.20

THINK LIKE A GOAT™