I hear some much about the bucks getting the urinary problems. Before I ever heard of this I had nubians and feed my buck alfalfa and grain (small amount) -and grass hay. I sold him when he was about 7 yrs old. Always healthy. Everyone I knew fed like this. Now I hear - no alfalfa - no grain -I bought some ammonium chloride from Hoegger Supply but haven't added it to his feed as yet. Has anyone else used this - are there any problems from adding it.
My little guy gets a bit of grain once a day - bit of alfalfa and free choice grass hay. Free choice minerals and kelp. How is everyone feeding bucks? These things get confusing.
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Julia, That's not a huge amount, but adding ammonium chloride to your buckling's feed will combat the risk of urinary calculi.
Of all the things you listed, I don't see anything in there they shouldn't be getting. Timothy pellets are the same as hay, just in a different form, and I don't think beets or BOSS have high protein which is what is "wrong" with alfalfa. You could skip the grains, and just use the BOSS, and hey pellets. I doubt they would notice, but my goats all like raisins too, so you might just give a few of those by hand at night.
Perhaps use carrots or apples to bribe them in? Combine the treat with a bell so they get used to coming with the bell. For me, all I have to do is go out and yell, "Hey girls!" loudly and they all come running.
I have 2-- 4 month old bucklings and one young buck who is 1 and a half. I've been giving them a "little" grain every evening to get them to come into the barn to lock up at night because the predators here are very bad. So it's about 1/4 cup for each of them in the evening mixed with some beet pulp and a small amount of BOSS and timothy hay pellets and timothy hay all day (plus manna goat minerals and baking soda free choice). Is that too much grain? I don't want to risk their health but at the same time I have to get everyone in at night for protection. How much is too much?
I have not personally lost any bucks from urinary stones, but I was at a class once, and there was a woman there that had lost two bucks to it.
She lost one, even after paying for a very expensive "might or might not work" surgery. It worked, but the buck had issues again, and later died. At the time, her vet didn't know that grains might contribute to the stones. The vet at the class said that grains were most likely the cause.
It's also very painful. She said it was horrible to watch her bucks, because it was obvious they were in pain. The vet at the class also told her that by the time they SHOW how much pain they are in, (or that you notice they are hurting) it's most often too late to save them.
When they say that there is a higher rate of urinary stones when feeding grain and alfalfa to bucks, that doesn't mean that every buck will get urinary stones. It's just more likely to happen. And if anyone you knew ever had a buck die and didn't do a necropsy, the buck could have died from urinary stones, and they just assumed it was parasites or something else. I rarely hear about people doing necropsies on bucks.
I don't normally feed my bucks grain, and I avoid alfalfa as much as possible. I'm in Illinois, however, and if temperatures start falling below zero in the winter, I know I'll have to give the bucks some grain, or they'll start losing too much weight. I try to avoid alfalfa because I have had trouble with zinc deficiency in some of my bucks, which can be caused by too much calcium, which comes from alfalfa. A couple years ago, I had bucks blowing their coats in February, which was not good! Symptoms of zinc deficiency include hair and skin problems, as well as excessive salvation, which basically looks like they're all foaming at the mouth. I went to the barn on one really cold morning, and it looked like someone had sprayed whipped cream all over the bucks!