I am very new to Nigerians. i bought a pregnant doe and a wether. I raise beef cattle and different species of poultry. I am considering feeding the goats a premium alfalfa hay or a very good quality 2nd cutting hay, but has anyone just used this chaffhaye stuff, they call it pasture in a bag. It looks really good for them but i'm not sure.
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I like chaffhaye a lot. Use it on the milk stand also. Don't go thru it fast but have no problem. Just followed what they said to roll the bag down tight against the hay and put a brick on it to hold it closed. The only time I got mold was when I had some in a closed small bucket by my milk stand. We keep ours in a small building that I have for hay and grain and it gets pretty warm in there but it has been okay so far.
I recently started feeding chaffhaye instead of pellets, and have been very pleased. I still offer grass hay 24/7 but I noticed that the ones who are getting chaffhaye (once daily for most of the does, twice daily for the doe I'm milking) aren't eating as much hay as they previously were.
Deborah, how were you able to tell the difference between the mold and the beneficial yeast cultures? I'm a little worried about mold since I don't go through a bag very quickly with my small herd. I didn't notice any in the bag I just finished, but with heat and humidity rising it may become a problem. I store the open bag in a (non-functioning) freezer, so hopefully that helps.
We used it as a sole source of feed during the drought, then we just fed it in addition to hay and pasture.
do you still give them free access to hay
I loved mixing it with grain on the milk stand! It really slowed down some of my grain hogs. Unfortunately no one in my area sells it. We had to get a semi load full, and it didn't last as well as they said it would. After a year, it started growing mold.
We feed it to our milking does with their grain on the milk stand. I really love it for it's convenience and it seems great for the does.
During a drought a few years back, we fed it exclusively. The only "problem" is that a couple of the doelings grew really big, but that also could have been because the parasite load on the pasture was zero due to the drought.