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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Goats and Hay
  • Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 23:10:30 EDT




> I have a strong feeling that I'm being mocked,

Instructive that you feel that way while Bev did not.

>
> The bottom line is that it costs no more to feed a good producer than
> it does a pint-a-day one and that CAE will reduce milk production to
> zip

If you feed a "good producer" and an ordinary flugle goat an artificial and
expensive dairy diet, then yes, it costs the same to feed them but you get
more
milk from the former. But that difference disappears when the goats are
managed on a natural diet, and many times the results are reversed with the
high
strung goats becoming ill and wan without the artificial diet they've been
bred to expect. So the old bottom line is like the saw "it's just as easy to
fall in love with rich man as it is to fall in love with a poor man" and the
results are equally as reliable.

The bottom line I'd propose is that in a proper natural environment for
goats, it costs nothing to feed an ordinary milk goat. That's some milk for
nothing. But an over bred high strung goat in that environment would give no
more
milk than the flugle goat and possibly give none while needing to have it's
purchased feed habit indulged. Some expense for no milk. No contest there.

The statement that CAE will (that's WILL) reduce milk production to zip is
unfounded. It is like the exortation from the goatateracist that you cannot,
must not, cannot, ever even remotely contemplate having goats with horns.
You
will be maimed, killed, or worse, and you goats will gore each other on a
daily
basis and die with their horns trapped in fences and branches. Not if, not
maybe, WILL happen. One frothing goatateracist near here raises kids for
sale
at six weeks and if the prospective buyer wants the kids to not be disbudded,
there is a hefty extra fee. Why? Because she must keep the goats separate
from the 'normal' disbudded goats so that the nasty horned beasties won't
harm
the others. Raving idiot. Goats don't have horns at six weeks!

I've kept goats for many, many years and all of them have had a full set of
magnificient horns. In all that time not one goat has injured me, a member
of
my family, or another goat. Not once.

Like that is the old saw that if a goat has CAE, its milk production will go
to nearly zero. Posh! Although CAE has only been recently identified, it
has been around for centuries. SOME goats are affected by it, and most of
those
only get arthritic in old age when they are pretty far past milking anyway.
I wouldn't be surprised that high strung over bred goats are laid low by it,
but on a practical farmstead a goat would be eliminated if it didn't produce
enough milk to warrant its keep no matter what the casue. So goats affected
by
CAE are eliminted and those not affected continue on unabated.

The proof is in results. We (and a great deal of other goat raisers I know)
ignore the minutia of goatiana advice and don't supplement our goats with
rare
minerals, don't dehorn them, don't medicate them in any way whatever, don't
carefully inspect medical records and milking records, etc. and yet we get
all
the milk we can use, nearly 100% live births, and nearly all those raised to
maturity with no problems whatever. Long experience has shown me that 98% of
the obsessive goatiana from goatateracists is utter rubbish. So when someone
on this list asks for advice on goats, I am ill inclined to keep this opinion
to myself, that is, if you run into a goatateracist, run for your goats'
lives!

And not just goatateracists, but rabbitologists, chickalogians,
pigoglotacists, and a host of others so immersed into one interest that they
detail it ad
absurdum. Just like that ancient MesoAmericans who thought that if they
didn't
conduct the annual human sacrifices, the sun would fail to wax in the spring,
these completely immersed people really think that if they don't set the
chick's water on the north side of the brooder and put exactly two pinches of
salt
in it that all the chicks will instantly fall over dead. They, the immersed,
would become disoriented and purposeless if most of the worderful detailiana
that keeps the warm would prove to be pointless.

That's why the emotional reaction, I suppose.




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