Sunday 1st January 2017

Very scrummy carrots!!
And here we have Curds and Garlic demonstrating beautifully, the art of eating carrots!!! Said carrots are the last of our salad carrots that we have been growing in the greenhouse and they have actually gone a bit tough for us now. The goats are not that fussy and in fact, carrots, along with willow , are probably one of their all-time favourite foods. It is lovely to be able to give them treats like this in the middle of winter when there is precious little for them in the way of outside browsing and grass. It is very rare that the goats leave the comfort of their field shelter nowadays. Their lives consist of nighttimes in the barn, a walk along their goat path to the shelter and then some seven/eight hours later, a walk back to the barn.
Relaxed at HomeRelaxed at Home
To return to the carrots, it is worth pointing out that had we taken the carrots into the kitchen and THEN fed them to the goats, we would actually have been breaking the law. Taking them straight from the greenhouse was okay though. The issue with feeding food that has been through a kitchen, is all to do with cross contamination. Following the BSE outbreak in 1996 and later Foot and Mouth in 2001, it became illegal to feed kitchen scraps to livestock in case said scraps had been in contact with any meat or meat products.
It is okay to buy vegetables from a dedicated livestock feed supplier or an outlet that has been approved (such as a vegetable wholesaler) and of course growing your own on your own land for your own stock is absolutely fine (as long as you don’t then pop up to the kitchen to give said veg a wash!!!).
Our goats were mightily impressed with the New Year’s Day treat. Sadly though, separate feeding was required as the goat harmony we mentioned before Christmas seems to have vanished. Pickle in particular is very intolerant of the Boers – we think it might be because of her ‘misbehaving’ hormones and the strange ‘non-seasons’ she is having!!! We have a chat with the vet planned in for this coming week!!!