Editor's note: This discription of overfeeding (from the human perspective) and underfeeding (from the goat perspective) by Ken Thompson first appeared on the ChevonTalk discussion list.
Original boergoats.com publication date Aug 21,2000.

Welfare Goats
by Ken Thompson

Well, I just came in from the goat yard, and detect the odor of "Old Billy Goat Spice" on my overalls. Sheila will have a spasm if she catches me sitting in this good chair and transferring one of her very favorite smells in this world to it.
We have been moving a couple of large bales of haygrazer hay into the goat pens, one into the large herd's quarters and one into the buck pen. Unfortunately, this is a necessary thing at this wrong time of year because of the severe drought in our part of the world. We got some nice rain back in July that was sufficient to really green things and start the grass to growing, but there was no more, and after a beautiful two weeks of green, it began to brown and twist again. The goats were in piggy-goat heaven for a while, but there is not much left and I don't want them grubbing out what is left, so out comes the hay again.

I could not help but think as I was moving the hay that this is really a bunch of welfare goats. They really haven't had to work a day in their lives for groceries. There has been some discussion on this list about feedlotting goats and other animals, and I expect that most of us would not say that our goats are being raised in feedlot conditions. Well, I really suspect that for most of us, the only difference is the size of the pens that we keep them in. Even those like me who have a bit of graze, if it ever rains, really don't depend on that to keep our animals in good shape. Most of us wouldn't recognize a goat that is actually in good range condition and capable of producing a good amount of good goat meat for what is truly the least dollars and time spent in taking care of it.

Please don't misunderstand what I have to say. Most of us don't have enough "range" to truly raise this kind of goat, one that doesn't see the feed bucket or the hay bale except in the most serious of poor range conditions. To one extent or another, most of our goats would feel pretty abused to have to live in those more normal and natural conditions. I know that some of us do a pretty good job of raising goats with only a relatively small amount of attention and with very little supplemental feed. These folks are the only ones of us who are making any money to speak of on sure enough meat goats. Some of us have identified and are servicing some ethnic markets that may allow a measure of profit as result of this savvy response to fill a need in our area.

My point is both serious and also a bit funny. Here I am, claiming to be in the goat business to raise goats to sell for meat, either to individuals or through the local market, and trying to keep my expenses down and my goat quality up, etc. After hauling hay to feed these animals that are hollering like they are starving to death, causing people travelling down the highway to consider reporting me for cruelty and abuse -- after all, if these were content animals with their bellies full, they wouldn't be hollering so loud and pitifully, right? -- I went to the feed room and dished up a small amount of a new feed product that I decided to try after talking with Mr Kent Mills, who is an excellent authority on feeding and forage, by the way. This product is a 20% protein range cube made entirely of grain and alfalfa and cottonseed products, with no urea or other things that would be questionable for a goat's diet. The cubes are 1/2 inch in diameter, which is a little larger than these animals are used to, but according to the feed tag, they should be yummy stuff. This is the second time I have fed these cubes, but it was the first time Sheila had been around ay the time they were fed.

The appearance of the feed bucket caused the usual stampede, even though most of the mob was about half stuffed with fresh haygrazer hay already. As I scattered the cubes in the trough, the pitiful hungry sounding hollering began to change to a more angry and critical tone. As I left the pen, while Sheila still remained in contact with a couple of her favorites, several goats took cubes into their mouths and then spit them out on the ground. A couple carried cubes in their mouths to the water trough (freshly cleaned, I might add) and dropped the cubes into the clean water. Several left the feed troughs and came to the gate near the feed room and began to let me know in no uncertain terms that they were not pleased with the chow. Sheila was laughing her head off, because of this diatribe that was obviously directed at me specifically because of these spoiled rotten animal's reaction to perfectly good chow that just didn't happen to appeal to them, and which would have caused any self-respecting range animal to have thought they had died and gone to goat heaven if the cubes had been scattered among them.

Welfare goats, indeed!! These goats are just like my kids used to be. Sitting at the table fussing about perfectly good food, in large quantities, while poor children in -----, well, you know what I mean. I hope y'all know that I don't have anything against taking good care of our animals. If we don't do so, they can't do a good job for us, especially if we are asking them to regularly raise good, sturdy, healthy, fast growing kiddos for meat prospects. Even if we are asking them to be producer's of animals for pets or for show purposes, it is important to take good care of our animals.

I just think that we need to always remember how these animals were intended to live and reproduce and eat and survive in their more natural settings, realizing that some natural settings are better than others, and that some problems exist in some natural settings that don't exist in others. If we can figure out how to allow these wonderful animals to live and grow and reproduce for us in the places where we happen to live by just making sure that they have everything they would need to do these things if we were not around to give them more, then I think we can begin to actually profit from keeping these animals on a regular day-to-day farmstead basis. Yes, we can take care of their sicknesses and injuries and up the percentages of animals that will survive to old age, but we can also avoid being the cause of some problems that happen because of our good intentions to make things better for these animals by feeding them too much of the things that are not really good for them, and by not allowing them to gain any natural resistance to what they must face every day of their lives.

We don't keep our two-legged kids in isolation and quarantined conditions all their lives, because we know that they have to develop immunities to the things that they will be exposed to as they live in this world. I don't think we ought to try to raise our goats in a bubble,either. But then again, I have just rolled out the feed wagon one more time, and I probably will succumb to the harsh language I heard from the herd tonight telling me in no uncertain terms not to bring any more of that crap to the feed trough again. I think I may have actually been cussed at tonight. Sheila sure got a kick out of the whole show, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. I have decided to keep that sack of feed though. Anytime I need to show the herd that things could be worse around here, and that they don't know how good they really have it, I'll just trot out a helping of that stuff and walk away and let them wonder if they are going to get some more of the same next time!!! Ken