We grained for years because it was fast and easy. We ditched the convenience and now on the stand we
feed sunflower heads, comfrey, lambs quarters, miners lettuce, dandelion, turnip/beet greens, siberian
pea shrub, berry vine,
black walnut leaves and/or whatever else I can grab a little of one my way through the garden. Takes longer but again serves two purposes, I thin the garden a tad/prune some plants and give the goats a wide range of nutrients/trace minerals. If/when our wheat/buckwheat/vetch/<insert cover crop here> is up I will also cut some of it, plant and all, for them. It sounds like a lot of work, but we only milk seasonally so its only for a couple months a year we are messing with the milk stand, and I would be playing in the garden at this time of year anyway. In my
experience feeding grains is tricky because they will eat way more than what they would eat in the wild, parts of it are missing, and its kinda flat nutritionally. (see the milking through post for a better explanation). Just my thoughts, YMMV.
--Kurt
PS: Im not surprised the forest is where you notice a difference in milk production, as counter intuitive as it sounds, ours increased when we laid off the wheat/sweet feed and added the variety we use now. Plus getting them off just pasture and into a forest gives them a huge variety of plants to choose from. We are in the process now of planting all of the above goodies in each paddock so they can browse as they feel the need. The paddock areas we planted last season mostly all self seeded this year so it will also become maintenance free.(hopefully)
edit: added PS