Thursday, July 24, 2008

Cabbage Leaves!

This is the time of year my goats are the most happy. The neighbor is starting to cut cabbage every morning and then every afternoon, my goat/pigs get a nice pile of cabbage leaves and a few cull heads of cabbage. My neighbors are a family farm, Osswalts (Ohz-walts) and they grow acres of cabbages, more every year. It is a very prosperous farm. Cabbage leaves are my goats' favorite goody and they eat a lot of them, let me tell you.

We park the farm truck at the end of their conveyor belt. The waste cabbage and leaves goes out the barn and into the truck bed. We bring it home late afternoon, dump it and I feed it to the goats two or three times a day. And we take the truck back over and park it for the next day's leaves.

This works out well for both of us. My goats get the added food, obvious benefits for me. Mr. Osswalt doesn't have to dump the leaves in the field and let them rot. OMG they smell like... well, you can imagine. And when they rot they get slimy. Yuck. Much better to put the leaves through goats.

I fork leaves into an old fashioned metal bushel basket and empty it over the fence or into feeders. That way I can keep track of how much I'm feeding. I have several of those hard plastic dark green kids' wagons which are filled up and parked outside the cattle panels. I carry the bushels of leaves and dump over the fence, fill up wagons and even a tote or two. The idea is to get them spread out enough that even the smaller ones can get what they want.

(Jill, Petey loves leaves and he makes sure he gets his fill. By the way, he has had a little bit of a runny nose. You were concerned with the AC at the National Show and I guess it got to him a little, but he is eating good and no temp.)

They still have hay free choice and get feed once a day instead of twice a day, but they will be fat and happy the rest of the year.

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