We feed our goats organic grain and organic alfalfa pellets, but have not been able to find organic hay or organic straw (straw for bedding) locally. I have found farmers growing them in Eastern Washington but I would need to buy a truck load at a time and I don't have a place to store that much product. Our barn is small (24' x 24') and the goats take up 2/3rds of that. We keep our tools, freezer and bikes in the one 12' x 12' section leaving us with only room for 9 or 10 bales of hay and straw. For a semi-truck load I would need a separate poll building just for that. Nice dream but it's not going to happen soon.
We have been buying our hay from a Coupeville farmer that uses no herbicides but does treat his fields with synthetic fertilizers. The goats have enjoyed the alfalfa/grass/weed mix and have been buying the straw (barley) from a different farmer. I asked that farmer last month what herbicides he used and was shocked with what he uses. That put us back in the hunt for a better product.
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| Surely with one of her boys on a bed of barely straw |
We called another Coupeville farmer that rumor had said grew organic barley. It turns out that in addition to organic barley he grows organic alfalfa, organic emmer wheat and an organic grass. We chose emmer wheat straw for our bedding as it has less chaff than the barley. Barley chaff gets in our cloths and shoes and is a real irritant. At times it can also bother the goats, making their utters breakout in a rash. The problem with regular wheat straw as bedding is that the stalks are large and they don't absorb urine well. Emmer wheat doesn't have the chaff and has smaller stalks - maybe our ideal bedding straw. Organic standards for Washington State requires bedding to be organic. Later this week we will get a load of organic alfalfa for the girls and his organic grass for the boys. We still feed the goats sunflower seeds and peanuts, neither of them organic. If we could find an organic source for those two products we would have pure, organic, goat milk. A work in progress.
Here on our little farm we feed our chickens organic food and we are soon going to feed our goats organic grain, they already get organic hay. Our buck loves to eat any vegetable scraps that we grow in our garden such as cucumber, carrot, and green pepper peelings,small tomatoes, and banana peels.
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