# What to do with grain remaining in feeder?



## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

I never know how much she will eat. I started with a Jeffers small sheep feeder, my goat pulled it off and spilled grain on the floor. I bought a toy bucket to set inside the feeder and attached with a large safety pin. I was hoping that left over grain in the bucket can be stored in a closed container. But she pulls it out and dumps it also. It is so humid here I hate to leave it in the feeder, also I'm afraid it will attract pests.
So the question is how to keep the grain in the feeder and what to do with uneaten leftover grain.


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## wheytogosaanens (Oct 26, 2007)

Feed her less grain.

Seriously. Start with a cup. Add another cup while she is being milked if she seems to be looking for it. If humidity is a concern, then I would feed the leftovers to your chickens when she is done. 

BTW, when she spills the feed, swat her little behind. Not a hard physical blow but a "smack" and make a nasty noise (Neaaaack!) Pretty soon you will only need the noise when she starts the spill process and she should stop. BTW this is an effective way to milk stand train a young doe.

HTH


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## Judys (Feb 19, 2009)

I dump leftovers in the chicken feed


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Grain on the milkstand while you are being milked, what the milkers don't eat gets dumped into the yearlings pen as a snack, cause there is rarely any left overs. If you get the molassas out of your grain, it won't attract flies, now all grain attracts mice and you have to be a special kind of goat lady to keep a chicken snake in your barn to keep mice etc. away 

Here is a photo of my grain, alfalfa, mineral bunker feeders, I really need to go take a photo of the small ones for the 6 foot pen walls.

As you can see they can't poop or paw at what is in the feeder, and I can fill it from my side of the barn, no having to go in with them just to feed. Vicki


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## Ashley (Oct 25, 2007)

Vicki, I'm hoping to build a feeder like that. What do you think of having the slats diagonal?


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

It didn't give me the 12 head holds I needed for that barn, with the slats diagonal. I started with no slats since none of the other pens have slats, but the old girls would share ends of the feeders and growl and bite and spend the whole time walking back and forth and bashing the younger goats out of the way, nobody was eating, not even them  The slats worked wonderfully. Since a buck stays the winter in each stall, the slats have to be a little further part than what does need, which then means young milkers can try to get through and get suck, why the slats are screwed in, quick removal. In my avatar, Rosette is stuck in that feeder


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## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

I LOVE your feeder. I am going to see if I can build something like those in my new barn we will be building soon, I hope!

I feed my left over grain to the chickens and horses. I wish I had snakes I could let live in the temporary thing I am milking in. The fire seems ot have chased them all away. I love snakes.


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## nightskyfarm (Sep 7, 2009)

I'm with Sully! Love your feeder Vicki and I too, Sully, love snakes. I might build a feeder like yours for my large pen for supplements, extra alfalfa pellets and the like. My milkers are fed grain in the parlor while milking. I fed uneaten feed to our 2 piggies.


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

The milkers only get grain on the milkstand here, too. Whatever may be left over, I keep it in there and take the feeder off the milkstand and put the feeder inside the can that holds the grain. Then I just refill at the next feeding. We are having bird problems and they like to sit on the feeder to eat the grains and then they poop in and on the feeder - yuck!. 

No issues with the kids. They keep on eating and I keep on refilling.


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## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

Ok so you say start out with one cup of grain and add another when that is gone? i usually dress the feed with 1/2 cup of BOSS. Is that good?
I really want chickens and was told they are not available till spring. So I am getting ready for them by working on a coop and a pen. Thanks for all the ideas


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## wheytogosaanens (Oct 26, 2007)

Dorit said:


> Ok so you say start out with one cup of grain and add another when that is gone? i usually dress the feed with 1/2 cup of BOSS. Is that good?
> I really want chickens and was told they are not available till spring. So I am getting ready for them by working on a coop and a pen. Thanks for all the ideas


Basically you only feed her what she will eat... then she won't be so wasteful. There may be a little left over (so chickens or another "hungrier" doe can have the scraps) but grain is too expensive to have it wasted like that.

BOSS is fine - you might want to top dress with 1/4 cup until you see how much she is going to actually eat. If she is eating the BOSS and not the grain, feed the grain first, then the BOSS.


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## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

I don't throw any feed away. My does get free choice grain in the parlor (although I do let the heavier ones go early to prevent them from eating to much) and i have a bucket sitting in the parlor for left over feed (clean the pails out completely once between groups and at the end of milking. Left-overs then go to the bucks if they're working or get mixed in with the kid pellets for kids/ yearlings. I do the same with my hay: does get fresh hay every day, left overs to bucks/yearlings. I love that feeder, too, Mine were built by my husband and his dad and have diagonal slots, but we had enough space and feed mainly hay in the feedtroughs behind them, since I now have only milkers in the pens with those feeders. I'll try to put a pic in.


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## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Arrgggh, now I finally have learned how to 'smallinize' my pics and i now I find out I don't know how to get the pic in this reply???!!!???


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## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

Good ideas, thanks. just started seeing rat droppings on floor, they are getting fat on what she pours out :/ Will start sweeping more often and swating her behind and yelling louder when she pulls out her bucket.


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## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

That feeder is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. When I get my barn, I will have me one of them there fancy feeders.


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## Hickoryneck (Jul 29, 2011)

My adults are fed on the stand. My one milker licks the feeder clean and will eat all I put in front of her. The other eats less (thank god lol) so if there is any left I mix it with more and give that to my old girl I have to feed her in a pen by her self as it takes awhile for her to eat and she refuses to get on a stand now. The Kids are bottom less pits and want way more then I give them so none is wasted there. If I ever do have extra it is fed to chickens but since I figured out how much each goat eats and weigh their feed we waste very little to none. 

That feeder is nice and I love the signs


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

So when your does are dry and you start them back on grain at the end of pregnancy, do they get grain on the milkstand only, or do you start them back on grain in the barn? The milk barn feeder in the photo has grain and feed bred in it when the girls are 125 days or so bred, they have been dried since 100 days pregnant and are started back on grain for kidding......do you just put yours through the milking routine pregnant?


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

You fed grain for last 50 days bred and don't buy the "kids get too big" view? Probably matters how much grain?


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

LLB101 said:


> You fed grain for last 50 days bred and don't buy the "kids get too big" view? Probably matters how much grain?


Lacia, from what I've read here, part of it depends on quantity and part of it depends on % protein. And part of it would depend upon the condition of the doe at that time. They are going to need extras, ie grain, when they start milking so they need to be started on that early so that it's not a shock to the rumen. I think % protein of grain ration depends upon your hay quality (doesn't grain ration ALWAYS depend on hay quality?). I've read here that some keep a low protein % up to kidding and some increase gradually up to kidding.

(Hoping I got that right. That's what I've gleaned on DGI over the last couple of years.)


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## skeeter (Aug 11, 2010)

Funny to see this thread back up. Since I saw it last summer and liked the ideas so much. I put in this

















and took it a step further









It's all working great :biggrin


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Yeah, I re-read this thread and it makes more sense now for some reason :LOL

Vicki said she starts grain at 125 days, the dry off was at 100 days, I read that wrong the 1st time.

Depending on the condition of the doe, and how skinny she tried to get in her FF, I'll start giving some grain only that last week or 3. I'm not trying to put weight on her, I think they just put it all on the kids at that stage. 

As MF-Alpines/Cindy says, its getting the rumen ready for bigger grain loads. Its super rare to get even a clumpy poop here, mine get good rumen divesity support with a pretty good variety of food regularly, courtesy of my food forest and permaculture work and horticulture business. The only clumpy poops are rarely in the fall if we get a lot of cider pressing pomace that still has too much sugar in it.

As soon as the kids are born, does get double to triple whatever she's been used to getting and I watch poops carefully. Some might even tease me about micromanaging :biggrin 

I'm still talking fairly small amounts here, I don't do a lot of grain, none here have ever gotten over a quart measure, I have to check, think that's about 2 lbs, and that was only in one extreme case. Once they are on milkstand, they get that grain mixed with alfalfa pellets to slow them down, and they eat as long as they milk, which works out to bigger milk producers get more. Leftovers get noted to start with less, I quickly learned who needed what, and leftovers go in with kids' creep feed and/or chickens. Nothing gets wasted here.

They get their grain on the milkstand, mixed with alfalfa pellets to slow them down a bit, get used to being back on stand and getting pre-kidding clipped etc. One was so huge she just did NOT want to get on milkstand, I got a step for her, but it still seemed dicey, so she got hers off the stand. 

My 75% ND gets almost no grain except maybe weeks 3-12 of milking, and I'm really impressed with the amount of milk that little doe puts out! Her udder is tight every morning again the past couple weeks, some combo of being bred and more daylight already? She's only 2nd freshener, milked thru last year, and only about 6 weeks bred, so I don't know at what point she'll shut down milk before I dry her off or not. I have to watch her and keep her from getting fat, she gets just a treat, literally a handful, not even a 1/4 cup. She does get a little BOSS for the vit E etc, a little bigger handful.

We have to constantly play musical goats and change pens around here, I use stock panels and carabiners a lot for easy to rearrange pens, as space is so tight, there are politics both goat and human (zoning laws on how many I can keep here at a given moment vs going to my friends), and changing phase/needs with being pregant, kidding, and kids growing. You all have the phases too, I'm not saying mine are special, LOL, but it seems like you either have enough does in the same phase to house together, or enough space that everyone has options. 

The tolerances around here are kinda tight, not so much leeway, so we have to juggle more, so there are few permanent feeders. You might be shocked at how tight space really is here, LOL, both in house, pens, garden. My house is a "cottage" only ~940 sq ft to give you an idea, every inch really counts and has to do multiple functions. Some of you have talked about barns bigger than my house, LOL! We use a lot of those fence hanging buckets and bigger tubs, and they stick heads thru stock panels to eat out of them and mostly behave lol. 

One of my goals this year is to get more built, but still with flexibilty. I have some cool ideas & sketches and I should be using this cooped up snow day here to try out making models of some of them! Instead of surfing LOL. We're supposed to get big snowstorm overnight, so maybe I'll clean off my table and get out the craft model stuff.

I love the feeders you all posted, and Vicki's signs are awesome! I'm having Big Barn Envy at the moment.


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## swgoats (May 21, 2010)

Lacia my barn is bigger than my house, lol. It sold the place to me. The farm was originally used for cattle. Flexibilty is nice. I am also constantly shuffling goats around. I feed in black rubber tubs. Not the ideal but flexible. The key is to provide enough space that they don't fight, but not so much that they stomp in them and disregard them. If I have a group larger than a handful, I like to put feed out in one pen, and then turn them in to it.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Ooooohhhh... barn envy.... repeating to self... Thy shalt not covet thy's forum-mates' barns...

I do want more DRY space here in Seattle. I'm considering something like those Sun Sails if I could get the angles where I need them and a waterproof version. Do some fun wild urban hip colors!

Yep, those big tubs are handy.

I posted long ago about the "keyhole" design in Permaculture and how I adapt the concept to have multiple pens be able to stick heads thru stock panels and eat from a central feeder/tub, but not be able to squabble much. I use variations on that a lot. If I just had flat space and not other trees, hill, obstacles to work around, I have sketches for elaborating on my my keyhole design with pie slice pens that come in to a central feeding area. Sure saves me a lot of steps!


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## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

This is my barn with feeders (now that I have finally figured out how to post pictures....). The feedthroughs are the metal ones. I already had these for years to use for calves and heifers.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

wow, that's luxurious barn!


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## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

When we moved here this 'giant' barn was just sitting here with absolutely nothing in it (no pens, just one big 50x90 floor space). I have two of these large pens in the barn now. We built it all ourselves. This one on the picture is my dry doe pen, they do not have a run outside yet, but most of the year they are in the pasture with calf hutches for shelter. Across from this pen we built our milking parlor, milk room and equipment room (all enclosed, simple, but grade A). Then there's a holding pen beside the parlor and another large pen like this one pictured for the milking does and that one has a connection to a pasture year round. Accross from the milking doe pen (and beside the pictured pen) are a few smaller pens for kidding, kids, young does, etc, whatever I need them for, and then there's hay storage. I love my barn, and like someone posted above: it's the barn why we moved to this place. When I called my mom to tell her we were moving I talked about hte barn and my pland for it and after awhile she asked me, 'so....there is a house too, right?' (there is! But I just about live in the barn) :lol


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Wow, your barn is more than triple the size of my house, and over half the size of one of my 2 lots, LOL! That would give me dry space here! But I don't want to give up garden sun either.

Spectacular from my perspective!


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

Marion-now all you need is a loft or second floor to utilize all that vertical space! That is one nice lookin' barn!


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## Trysta (Apr 5, 2011)

Ha, yeah, the barn is bigger than MY house, too. A lot bigger. But then again: it has a lot more inhabitants :lol. I have a small loft above the milking parlor, but it isn't strong enough for hay storage or anything like that. It just has our two small show boxes and some replacement parts and such. It would be nice to have a hay loft, but I use large bales, and it wouldn't be that easy to get those on or off anyway. I think my barn looks so 'luxurious' because of the large pen, but that is just a choice you make. I like keeping the does in large groups and I think it reduces fighting (groups don't change all the time and there is a boss and a nobody, but they don't feel the need to fight about it anymore), but it does mean that every now and then you have an odd doe that just won't fit in at the moment (still too young, not feeling well, etc) so that's where my three small pens come in. They are multi purpose. And last year I actually partitioned off about a third of the dry doe pen for a group of 'younglings' and I had my smaller milkers in the larger part of the pen, dry does outside, so yeah, I can play around with my space. I really love this barn and feel very lucky we found it, because I would have NEVER been able to afford to build something like this!


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## fmg (Jul 4, 2011)

I guess I am just used to having a lot of junk that needs storage space, so I was thinking of a loft for that and not necessarily hay, lol!


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## Bella Star (Oct 27, 2007)

You lucky girl ! I am so happy that you found your dream barn and with room to store and spread out stuff it makes it a lot easier and comfortable for you and your girls.
Happy girls puts more milk in the pail ! :lol


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