The right nutrition early in your kid goat’s life can set the stage for their lifetime performance. Choosing the right milk replacer for your kid goats can be a daunting task. Consider these tips to feel confident in choosing what’s best for your goat herd.
Lambing is the most important activity that occurs in the sheep flock each year. Success or failure during lambing season is the largest single factor affecting the profitability of the sheep flock. Producers need to help stack the deck to ensure a successful lambing season.
Switch laying hens to a complete chicken layer feed when they start laying eggs around 18 weeks of age. Choose a complete layer feed that includes all the essential nutrients laying hens need to lay strong and stay strong. Then make the transition gradually over one week.
Fuel prices are high but horse owners continue to haul down the road; they may be eating peanut butter sandwiches, but they are still fueling up, loading up and hauling to shows. One survey reported that horse owners transport an average of 2.4 horses on 24 trips per year for roughly 240 miles per trip. This averages out to a 5-hour trip every other weekend. Many horse owners and horses spend even more time than that on the road.
You want an animal to look great throughout the year, but even more important, is being at their best at a future date – show day. For heifers, there might be multiple target show dates, and for steers there may only be one, but regardless of how many dates you’re targeting, your animal’s nutrition program needs to be developed with the end goal in mind.
During the first seven or eight months of gestation, the fetus grows very slowly (approximately 0.2 lbs per day) so early pregnancy does not present much of a nutritional challenge to the mare. Dry mares in early gestation can basically be fed like any other mature, idle horse. Good quality pasture or hay along with a supplement such as Purina® Free Balance 12:12 vitamin/mineral supplement or Enrich Plus® Ration Balancing horse feed may be all that is necessary to meet these mares’ nutritional requirements.
The quality of a ewe’s milk directly correlates to the nutrition and mineral fed before and after lambing. Grazing or feeding high-quality stored forages and supplementing the correct balance of fats and carbohydrates translates into better milk production for the ewe. Here are four tips to help increase milk production and improve lamb performance:
What is the difference between alfalfa hay and timothy hay? Both hay sources are excellent forages to provide to your herbivores, but there are some differences between them nutritionally. To understand how those differences impact your animals, some background information is needed.
Hatching eggs at home can be a fun project for those looking to grow their backyard flocks. Incubating chicken eggs is a 21-day process and requires an egg incubator to help control temperature, humidity and egg turning. To help baby chicks start strong once they’ve hatched, feed a complete Purina® chick starter feed from hatch until week 18, or when the first egg arrives.
Everyone knows a foodie- that person who enthusiastically tries new food and finishes every bite on the plate. While some horses fit the “foodie” description, not all horses are as open-minded. Finicky eaters will turn up their nose if the taste and texture isn’t just right.