posted 8 years ago
We're planning fencing at the moment-- so a ways away from actually getting goats, but some of our fencing choices will change based on the hope of getting dairy goats, or not.
We live on an urban, 1 acre plot of land and currently have 6 muscovies and 6 chickens who free range, but we're gradually dividing our plot into several areas. Our temp doesn't go below freezing, and our climate is more or less Mediterranean (rain in winter, dry in summer)
With our current setup, about a third of an acre is food forest, with the rest divided into annual beds and paddocks (with overlap and rotation-- including our house in one paddock-- the chickens and ducks can sometimes be in the food forest, particularly as it gets more mature, for example). We wouldn't be growing much goat food ourselves. I'm wondering if anyone has experience getting garden waste from landscaping services (typically this is tree cuttings, brush, etc.-- I'm not too worried about herbicides or pesticides on these) and making this the primary source of food, with very small amounts of grain/hay/mineral blocks.
I've been setting up relationships with some landscaping services who would deliver on different days, instead of going to the dump, and I think I could figure out how to identify most poisonous brush and not feed it to the goats. I'm just not sure if I'd still end up paying quite a bit for goat feed, and if this makes goat ownership prohibitively expensive. Has anyone fed their goats primarily on brush, or have modern breeds been bred to feed primarily on hay?
Thank you for thoughts and advice!