help my goat loves dog food!

[nightshade]

Ours actually kind of did it naturally, we have two weiner dogs in the house and he would follow them in and out when they would got out to do their thing. And now if he wants to go when they don't he goes to the door and cries, it is really amazing. I never knew it was possible.

I am getting a lot of conflicting info on here just like I have been getting locally which has me worried. There really is no way to completely keep him away from the dog food as long as he is living in the house. And as I said if he stays this size and well behaved he will stay in the house. I still can't seem to find a local vet that can answer the question they all just tell me either they do not deal with live stock or that they simply do not know.

I guess the best thing would be to try to just keep him out of it as much as I possibly can. Better safe the sorry.

 

[username taken]

use your common sense here. Do goats eat meat as part of their natural diet? No. Dog food contains meat, thus goats shouldnt eat dog food.

Apart from it being no good for him and not natural, it is actually illegal to feed meat to ruminants, because of the BSE/scrapie risk.

 

[Mikhail]

What about feeding the dogs in a separate room? or putting the goat somewhere else while the dogs are eating. Or maybe up on something the dogs are able to get on but the goat can't? Like my cats are fed on the bathroom counters, places my dogs can't get.

Honestly, meat is very bad for goats to eat. They're herbivores, they aren't supposed to eat meat. dog/cat food is extremely dangerous for rabbits to eat too (they're herbivores as well), which is why I'm careful to make sure my dogs/cats food is somewhere impossible for the rabbits to reach

 

[ThreeBoysChicks]

I am no Goat Expert, but what I have always been told and read is that whethers really do not need grains at all. Really good hay and grass is all that they need.

Do you know at what age he was whethered?

Long term, high amounts of grain, causes a condition in which the excess form the food build up deposits in their kidneys. Because they were whethered, his urethra did not grow to its max size. These deposits can form blockages. The blockages are extremely painful and unless cleared will kill your goat.

Fiasco Farm (Great resource for goat info) has a good explanation http://fiascofarm.com/goats/stones.htm

In conclusion, will it kill your boy, perhaps not. But you have grown attached and I am sure you want him to live a long time and you would most definitely not want to watch him go through pain and potentially surgery. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure as my Grandmother always said.

Edited to add - I have two whethers Danny and Yogi and I do control their grain consumption.

 

[nightshade]

Skeeter is only a few months old so he is still intact yet and now with the warm weather here I will wait til the cold comes to do it. There is less problems doing it in the cold weather then in the warm I have found. I moved the dog feeders to the bathroom and hubby said he would build a little doggy door that is the Weiner's size so they can ge in but Skeeter can't. I think this will take care of it, I just have to make sure everyone knows that when you take a shower ect. to set the feeders up so when he follows you in to lay by the tub he don't find them. This hide the dog food game is getting old fast.

edited for spelling

 

[zatsdeb]

also from fiascofarms.com
copied this....

Another Note on Dog & Cat food: Be aware that is illegal to feed any ruminate protein back to a ruminate as part of the scrapie/BSE control program. Most dog and cat food has ruminate protein in it, and is not labeled for goats, sheep, or cattle. This ban has been in effect since 1997.