Re: Goat pasture. What to do with waste hay?

BothFeet wrote:

Thanks, its good to know there is something useful to go with the hay.
I've read that dog and cat poop is bad for compost, but livestock
manure is good. Why is that?

They don't get out in the summer for a few reasons. The vet told me
that all that dry grass does not have much nutritional value. Also,
they just wont eat it. When everything is green and lush they just
munch away. As soon as everything dried up they just wander around and
don't eat it. Then they get bored and start causing trouble ... like
getting up on the porch and climbing on my patio furniture.


Janet Baraclough wrote:

The message <1152913495.341189.19500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from juustagirl@xxxxxxxxx contains these words:


I'm pretty new to rural living so please be patient ;)

I have a small herd of goats, during the spring they roam about and
graze, in the dry months of summer I have them penned up and hay-fed.
I get lots of wasted hay on the ground, mixed with lots of goat poop.
I also put straw down in their shelters for bedding and I have to clean
and replace that too. What do people do with all this waste hay?

Stack it and compost it, hay or straw stamped with poop makes great
compost for the garden.
Why don't you let the goats loose to browse in the dry months? It's what
they're designed for.

Janet.

--
Isle of Arran Open Gardens weekend 21,22,23 July 2006
5 UKP three-day adult ticket (funds go to island charities) buys entry
to 26 private gardens


You can minimize the waste hay if you construct hay feeders for them. You can probably find designs online, but they're basically what's called a "keyhole" feeder.... I googled goat feeders and keyhole feeders...didn't get much in the first, but found this in the second
http://tinyurl.com/lwsos The idea is that they can't just pull the hay out, or have "discussions" with each other about particular mouthfuls of hay. Makes them mind their manners. The first search pulled up a number of sites that indicated some people having concern with problems with keyhole feeders - you can decide yourself if you think you'd have problems. Some of the difficulties seemed to be with people that had horned goats - you can see that various people came up with various solutions.
That said, goat manure - like sheep manure - is good fertilizer, and isn't very hot, even when fresh(meaning it can go directly from the goat pen to the rose bush with no damage to the rose bush!). You asked why no dog and cat manure when cow/horse/goat/sheep manure is good...dogs and cats (and pigs) are carnivores/omnivores with a single stomach. The other group are all herbivores, and except for the horse are all ruminants with multiple stomachs and long guts that process the roughage. I'm not sure that answers the question, but it's _an_ answer!
SueK
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