# Field Peas



## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

has anyone grown or bought field peas for part of their goats' diet? Experience?


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

No not really. I have grown peas and then let the goats in the garden when they finished bearing. They get corn stalks too. 

There is a deer pea that I planted once. Check with your local feed store for planting deer plots. Goats will eat what deer eat.


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## Narrow Chance (Oct 29, 2007)

I plant deer plot food for my goats. I plant all the pens.. and some in the loafing pen. Goats love it.. and so do the deer. Deer will jump in the goat pen to graze.. several times I have wondered what a horned goat was doing in my pens.. lol
Not sure of the mix I used but it had oats, clover, rye, kale and some sort of pea,.. a running kind. Not sure if it made seed.. never gets high enough.

It's a little late to be planting deer plots though.. as most is a cold weather crop and can't take the heat. I'm sure you could plant a snow pea.. but that would be an expensive crop just for goats. Come to think of it.. it'd be cheaper than buying alfalfa.

I give my goats all the leavings from the garden.. what little there is. My old doe absolutely loves collars.. she would climb a 10 foot fence just to grab one bite.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Same as Rett, so yes I know the girls like peas. But I have also helped those who have had their goats impacted and bloated on peas. Biggy is change. When finding alternative feeds to use, go slow, and is it really worth it if you can only get the product cheap for a month? I do feed 'feed bread' from the day old store all winter, but I wouldn't do it if it was just for a week or so. Come spring I stop because of milk sales (lard and all in the bakery goods  and it's a real hillbilly thing to do and admit of course  And wierdly, it doesn't make big fat goats like it does us! So go slow, you figure that most goats are on byproducts, ground everything, it takes a huge change in rumen flora for them to even digest whole oats or corn or barley, let alone a legume like peas or beans, espcially dried. Vicki


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## wyobwilliams (Feb 18, 2010)

For those that have planted deer plots for the goats, have you noticed a change in milk flavor from the plants? I have read that turnips will flavor the milk. I really want to find some pasture plants that I can use that will not flavor the milk. I want to find two different mixes. One being longer term perennials and the other being an annual mix. We will be rotating pasture and cultivated fields to keep things fresh and vigorous. My biggest concern is over milk flavor. My wife was raised with goats milk but I have yet to develop a taste for it. I love the goats but I am not a big fan of the milk or cheese yet. Suggestions would be most appreciated. Thank you. Brett

We have 4 goats behind our rented house being fed hay. Two Saanan does and 2 Saanan wethers.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

It is very rare that feed stuff alters the flavor of properly handled milk. You milking practices are normally to blame for off flavor milk. It is easy to blame the goat but it is very rarely the feed or the goat. 


> My biggest concern is over milk flavor.


Actually your biggest concern is the health of your goats!
You would need to limit grazing on a meadow that consists of anything but grass and legumes. Especially garden things like turnips and kale. Kale is notorious for causing hemolytic anemia. All cole crops are dangerous in large quantity. As 'deer plots' they are a come and go snack- not all day grazing. A supplement.
Digestive upsets will occur with constant grazing of brassicas and the nutrition levels are variable so it would be best to use this for bucks and yearlings but not your milk stock if you care about output. You might check articles on northern european practices as they stall dairy cows and bring them every mouthful. They use chard and etc but it is balanced carefully with other feedstuffs to keep blood chemistry correct. Northern Wyoming would be a challenge for winter forage! Fescues and yellow clover are acclimated to northern climes and there is a winter oat as well. 
Perhaps contact your county agent or state agri office for common practice in your area.
Good luck!
Lee


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## wyobwilliams (Feb 18, 2010)

Sorry, you are right that animal health is my first priority. I just take that as a no brainer. My mistake. My interest are first in animal health but then also in milk flavor and pasture and ecosystem health. I am looking for a more sustainable system than many people use. You are also right that we will need to feed hay in the winter. That is just a fact of life. I just would like to keep it to a minimum and keep the goats out on pasture as much as possible. Thanks for the help. Please keep it coming. Brett


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

It would be nice if that was a no brainer. You would be surprised at how many people believe the cartoon images of a goat eating whatever there is to be found. I just got off the phone with a lady who took a high production healthy doe to a dying animal because she threw her out with the cows and when asked what she got for feed I was told she can get some of the cottonseedmeal when they feed the cows. Nice. Rotten round bales in the rain and she wants to know why this goat is sick. And that is just one of many examples of how people think of goats. 

I think it is wonderful you want to develop quality pastures for your animals and one of the things we have learned is to plant as many things as you can that are complimentary so that they can graze on as many different plants as possible for a more complete nutrition profile. Northern grasses are actually more nutritious than our fast growing water filled fluffy grasses so you have an advantage there. Best of luck and please come back and share results.
Lee


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

The deer plot I use is peas, vetch, chickory, clovers, millet etc....I also add 50 pound bags of bird seed mixes to the 'mix' as I seed. But yes this is just a small part of their diet as they graze through it, we have such agressive native grasses and of course the underbrush in the woods is their favorite. Vicki


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## wyobwilliams (Feb 18, 2010)

Lee, you mention cole crops all being dangerous in large quantities. What are large quantities? I am not likely to use a bunch of them in a pasture situation. I do not think turnips or radishes are considered cole crops but it would be good to know what to stay away from. Like you said, we want healthy animals. Thanks Brett


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

I'd heard this stuff and went searching after Lee's post. 

Most of the studies I found showed bad effects when the brassicas were 40%-plus of the diet. A few showed effects at lesser amounts So don't turn your goats out into the broccoli/cabbage patch to clean up after harvest and leave them there for days :rofl

Maybe there's a temptation to feed brassicas as many of them are high in biologically useable forms of calcium? I have never given my chickens any supplemental calcium for example, and they have nice thick shells and eat lots of brassicas.

I will continue to let mine eat the old leaves and kale stems as I prep food from the garden, but I was considering growing more in some bare areas for them, and I'll be aware of limiting the amounts. 

A diet of hay and protein supplement seems like us living on Triscuits and Power bars :rofl Maybe it meets nutritional requirements of a few components science has identified, but new phytochemicals are being discovered every day, science is barely beginning to understand how nutrients work together or against each other, etc. On one hand its relatively safe, certainly predictable, but compared to a natural browser's varied diet, imho its bound to be deficient in something we haven't yet tested and labeled.

I'd like to find/learn more about how goats with lots of variety of pasture/browse, a more natural goat forage diet, how does their rumen flora & health differ from our goats that are fed very limited choices?


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

You can't move back and forth between ruminants and single stomached animals in your mind. The main stay of your ruminants diet has to be the forage they have. I am lucky in that I live in the national forest, the girls glean anything they want from the understory, native grasses, grasses and weeds I plant, small trees, large bushes etc....but even with the amounts of calcium rich understory youpon we have, I know that I need more calicum than this in my goats diet. So to improve this roughage I feed alfalfa. Because alfalfa and roughage in the form of browse is not enough calories, energy or fat, I feed grain, in varying amounts dependant upon what the doe is doing or buck needs. Because I feed whole grains and the mineral content is lacking, and because I live on an iron ore hill is east Texas, I have to spend more time than most with minerals, which includes blood and liver testing.


When you take any of this balance and concentrate on one thing more than another, or take them out of sequence (like the crazy argueing that goes on over grain....grain complements your roughage/hay/alfalfa pellets...it compliments it, it is not the most important thing on the farm...and when it does gain that much importance the goats suffer. 

Now if all you have is really awful hay (and you can't buy alfalfa pellets), I mean like ditch hay, swamp hay, old hay or prairie hay...than sure you had better spend a whole lot of time figuring out what you are going to feed as a concentrate to keep your does in any kind of shape with such poor quality hay. But that is an extreme. Vicki


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