[familyop]

"Good luck to you in this new endeavor...:O)"

Thank you. There's a lot of work to do here with next winter's weather being possibly colder than -20 F and winds over 100 mph at times. That means double snow fences here and there: big, inclined ones followed by little ones. ...heating for stock tanks, (probably cheap, passive solar), little power plants, etc. We'll have to also find out what we can store (and possible grow) that goats will eat, if anything, during the ugliest part of winter. We're pretty good with low-cost, large greenhouse stuff.

[goat granny]

With only a handful of goats you will need to lay in hay..I did some figuring on how much hay per head and it came out to an average of 25-35 bales per goat to go from last pasture in fall to spring pasture...depends on the size of the goat...they love alfalfa and timothy grass, but any good hay will work...

Our flock got pretty big and the year hubby passed on we were going to put up 3000 bales...to be sure not to run out if spring was late. But we had 80 goats at that time..

I am sure its the same with cattle, the hay must be kept dry, if it gets moldy it can kill a goat....

Shortly after my husband died my kids came out and helped a lot, but one of the feeders in the pasture got moldy if it rained you had to dump all the hay out because of mold..I had one goat die of encephalitis due to not cleaning out the pasture hay feeder....I found her walking around in a circle (symptom) of encephalitis.) It took her 24 hours to die and I got her in the barn and she seizured for those hours before she died...Couldn't put her down by shooting, as its a blood born disease.