Leading a healthy life with optimum development and high milk efficiency is going to be provided with a balanced nutrition for the animals.
The nutrient requirements of dairy goats differs according to periods. These animals immediately reply in the affirmative to well care and sufficient feeding. Time for feeding with milk starts from the birth. It can continue for 3 weeks or extend to 5- 6 months by depending upon the production system.
Feeding With Colostrum
Within the birth of sheep and goat; they should take colostrum about 10- 20 percentage of their weights between 3 and 12 hours. Sufficient intake is essential for them to protect themselves from diseases and to survive.
Colostrum production proceeds in the first 4- 5 days of lactation and in the sequel milk synthesis is applied to udders. Surplus of the produced colostrum can be preserved by freezing it and after, can be used by dissolving it. Besides its’ immunglobin- rich quality, it includes vitamin A, D, E, energy and protein in high amounts.
Feeding With Milk And Solid Food
The stable food is milk for sheep and goat after birth. They are fed with milk and other substitutive feeds. Different lactation and feeding methods can be applied in the suckling period. In this regard, sheep and goat are directly fed with breast milk or feeders.
Sheep and goat should be observed at least 4 times a day in terms of general situation and feeding. Additionally, milk sufficiency should be controlled in terms of efficiency in this period.
Feeding In The Delactation And Fattening Period
There are generally 3 different methods in order to prepare sheep or goat stock such as; dairy sheep and dairy goat fattening, intensive fattening and extended sheep- goat fattening in our country and world. Race of the breeded sheep and goat, business structure, possibility for the usage of forage, forage quality, meat prices, demanding circumstances and such factors are effective in order to decide the fattening time and method.
The dairy sheep and goat stock is a fattening type which animals are fed with milk and other substitutive feeds until slaughtering or a bit earlier. In such a type, sheep and goat should start to be consume starter feed beginning from their 5-7 days ages. In order to increase live weight profit and maximize development, animals should be sucked milk as much as possible.
Intensive stock is a fattening type which sheep and goat are fed with concentrated feed based rations and which rapid increases in liveweight are targeted. It starts with delactation and proceeds until 4- 6 months ages. The sheep and goat should definitely get used to solid foods in their suckling periods and consume a far amount of starter feed. After delactation, they should be fed with starter feed for 1- 2 weeks more and then they should start to consume fattening feed. For this purpose, the roughage rate in ration should be at the rate of 50 percentage and while the roughage rate decreases, the concentrated feed rate should be increased.
Extended sheep- goat stock is a fattening type which animals are fed with roughage based feeds such as fodder and straw. In such a type, the grains which are used as the energy sources should be strengthened with various protein- based feeds and vitamin- mineral additives. In extended stock, feeding animals with concentrated feed based rations for 30- 60 days provides a liveweight profit and higher liveweight rate.
