Posted on 01/27/2014 4:28:25 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
There’s no fence between my property and the neighbors, so occasionally the goats will get to wander over to sample whatever’s growing.
They’d rather eat leaves off the cornstalks than the corn. While it’s growing up anyway. They just discovered soybeans last year.
Where do you buy alfalfa seeds?
That was over 20 years ago, but I would guess either the elevator where we got our feed for the goats or the seed store. It was a small rural town and the old hard ware store actually had seeds you could not get in seed packages lined up on the shelf in quart jars...It was the first place I found zucchini bush plant seeds. Hubby passed away in 1990 so it was prior to then. We had our feed receipt at the elevator and would buy it by the 1/2 ton. Our goat feed was....x amount of corn, X amount of oats.....X amount of selenium salt, X amount of molasses and we choose a certain sunflower seed X amount. ......Dag nabit your right, they were spoiled, but the quality of the feed affected the quality of the mohair sheared. They also got selenium salt to lick when they wanted it....In Michigan, there is a lack of selenium in the ground where there feed was grown..IE: Michigan. It was needed or they could get a muscle wasting disease. The kids would at about 1 week get a selenium injection to get them started. (being a nurse helped a lot with taking care of them...I gave all injections, sub Q or muscular.)—— Simular to adding iodine to salt for people. SPOILED BRATS...:o) but loved..
I checked in between posts and I can get seed at various places near here.
It seems the vegans have ramped the price up due to demand.
Sprouts on your counter might be ok for humans, but goats would need a LOT more than that!
My nursing skills are a bit, shall we say, poor.
My first attempt with CD&T shots got ME stuck and needles bent! (I learned to sneak up on them to give shots. But if the later ones to get a shot knew the OTHERS had gotten one; I’d be in for trouble again.
I watched the lady give Elly Mae her shot at the vet and I learned some then. Petting her, poking at her a bit with your hand, massaging her gets her used to being touched. Then you merely make a tent of skin and slip it in. She didn’t even seem to acknowledge the shot!
When I tried it, I did the same things the vet did, and got the same results. 2 days later, when time for second shot, I stuck her, pressed the plunger and noticed medicine coming out the other side of the pinch of skin, as I’d gone clear thru! I hastily did it right and got half a dose in.
Amazingly, she never gave me any trouble with that shot afterward.
I am proud of you, its scary at first to give shots. In nursing my first injection (with the teacher standing by) was a sub Q heparin in the belly. As a student you smile and ooze confidence so the patient does jump out of bed and run down the hall because you never had given an injection before......LOL Sub Q are usually shorter needles than IM.
My husband had plowed and disc the area, it was all weeds, then he had a hand held seeder and just walked the area turning the handle. (maybe you have seen these types of hand seeders (plastic) I don't remember too clear on the amount of seed per acre, but I don't think it was more than 1 1/2 pounds or 2 for an acre of land... Those hand seeders spread the seed out several feet on each side of you. Its not like planting a garden, he walked at a good pace and then changed pace according to how much seed was left in the hand seeder....easy to do, you don't plant alfalfa close, you spread it. Its like spreading any grass seed. Alphfa spreads (reseeds itself every year. And gets thicker after a few years.
Of course you probably know some of this already...:O) VERY PROUD OF YOU FOR GIVING AN INJECTION.
Just to remember to get just a little pinch of flesh to put the needle in, it saves on your fingers getting stuck with said needle.. Vets are amazing. I once told my vet he should teach student nurses. They will hit a vein first stick on dogs and the dogs skin is covered with hair. PS I had to use a different wormer every time I did the flock so they didn't get immune to one kind of wormer. Some were just a few drops on the back of the neck, but one of them was an injection, another a pill (bolus) B S on trying to shove a pill down a goats throat with a balling gun. Tried that only once and went for the needles and the other wormer..
Geeze I type too much like I talk too much...
No problem; as I am an information consumer!
Perhaps you can give me a clue about her poop.
Instead of little berries scattered about, she poops out a little ball of them, stuck together.
Now if we could just keep some of our fellow FReepers from Flinging this poop around...
;^)
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