Egypt Creek Diary: Pregnant does moved onto new pasture

This herd of pregnant does is ready to move to new pasture.

The dry grass, leaves and acorns they've been living off of

has been supplemented with an all-natural 19% protein
horse tub. The horse tub was the only "all natural" tub I could
find in this area.

Back before Thanksgiving I was wondering how the grass would hold up in my stockpiled paddock. Click here to see the blog entry. Well, after numerous frosts and two snows, the grass has held up better than I could have expected. I moved the goats onto the stockpiled grass over the New Year weekend and they went right to work eating it. There is a lot of dry grass in the pasture but there is a lot of new grass greening up also.

This is not a fancy pasture. Part of it is old hay pasture and part is cutover timber. None of the pasture has been improved. One of the biggest problems lately is under-grazing. The only goats on this pasture for the past 120 days was a group of 20 does and a buck during breeding season. They barely made a dent in the forage during the 45 days they were there. No goats have been on the pasture for the past 60 days.

This pasture has a lot of sage brush in it and I think that works as a windbreak and as insulation for the shorter grasses. If there is anything good to say about sage brush, I guess that is it. By the way, I had 2 tons per acre of lime applied to all my pastures a few years ago to try and help the sage brush problem. Didn't help much.

I had been saving this pasture for my biggest herd of pregnant does. They will be here during kidding, which begins near the end of February. I also moved the mineral feeders and the horse tubs to this pasture. This groups of goats will be low maintenance for the remainder of the winter.