Goats and Sheep: Nutrition/Diet 1 (Digestion)

A realization came to me: I'd forgotten that once, being a city-girl, I didn't know about large-animal health and nutrition. I knew that organic foods were important, but I didn't know much else. Since my big-city days, I have been to college for livestock nutrition, care, health, and basic veterinary practices and I have also done extensive research and I have learned (and am still learning!) a lot. So, for those of you who may not know, I'm going to go into some livestock nutrition 101.

Horse Digestive System

All livestock and animals that eat grass, leaves, pine needles, shrubs, and things like that have special stomachs; these animals are all ungulates (hoofed). In order to extract the nutrition from whole grains and cellulose these animals need to ferment--rot using specialized anaerobic bacteria--these foods in specialized stomachs or guts. Non-kosher animals, with the exceptions listed in the Torah, use a part of their gut called the cecum to do this. The exceptions and all kosher mammals chew their cud or ruminate. (Camels do have a rumen, but they are not ruminants--they are Tylopoda.) Ruminates have the classic "four-chambered stomach." 

Different ruminants eat a different range of things. Cows, for example, are mostly grazers; that is to say that they eat grasses, legumes, and other ground cover. Cows have long tongues with little grippy, raspy, bristles (kind of like a cat's) that allow it to "lick up" the grass. Because of this, cows prefer to eat nice, long grasses and leafy legumes that they can wrap their tongues around and lick up.

Horses, while not ruminants, have very prehensile lips. Unlike ruminants, they have top and bottom teeth on the front of their mouths (ruminants only have bottom teeth in the front) that allow them to eat tougher things. Still, horses digestive systems are very particular and unique is some ways and I won't get into all that here. Suffice it to say that they like grasses, some bushy plants, and leafy legumes, but horses nip their food instead of licking it. They are grazers, too, but will browse a little.

Sheep and goats, (more-so with goats,) are browsers. These guys have nimble lips and are able to be picky. Very picky! They love bushes and trees and will eat lots of weeds and thistles, too. Sheep especially like grasses and leafy legumes, but goats like them, too. These creatures prefer a varied diet and tend to get bored with being fed the exact same thing over and over again. (Which is why I like to feed my babies different foods so that they have more fun.

Rumen pH is important to maintaining a healthy ruminant. There are bacteria that live in the rumens and cecum of ungulates. These bacteria break down the cellulose and complex sugars in the plant materials and they need a certain pH to do well. Different food items need different bacterial combinations to be broken down properly, so it's important to change diets gradually to give time for the bacterial colonies to adjust to the different foods. What can go wrong? Well, in a mild case, the animal in question could get diarrhea and be unable to assimilate the nutrients it's being fed well for a few days. In a worst case, the poor little animal could die. Rich foods like alfalfa and grains can do this. Grains, for example, when fed in excess, cause the bacteria to overgrow. The bacterial colony normally produces an amount of gas as it ferments that the goat can easily handle, and belch out. In this case, however, the goat cannot compensate for the sudden extreme gassyness and can die.

We free-feed baking soda to the goats and sheep (ie: leave it out for them all the time), so that they can regulate the pH in their rumens as they see fit. Fortunately, while a sheep or goat can get greedy and overeat, they know what to use the baking soda for and give themselves relief for their tummy aches. We also never free-feed grain, fruits, seeds, or berries; each goat is individually feed these snacks and treats, or a very small amount is put out.

I'll get into more about actual feeds in another blog, I think. Looking at it, there's quite a bit of info here.