Open Fields

Last week we got a bit of a setback in our grazing area. We were going to have 2 large additional fields to graze the goats in. We heard from the owner that we would be able to graze them in the new fields when the grass was tall. One morning we opened the gate and let the goats in. They seemed to love it, they were running and jumping around like crazy. That afternoon we spoke with the owners son(the owner is on an extended leave) and he said that the goats shouldn't be in the big fields as they are going to graze horses in them instead. The cuts the goat grazing by 2/3, with it being the better 2/3 that is going to the horses now. We can let them graze in the original area we had them in(which has been significantly expanded with new fence lines) so that is good, but not as good as we originally had thought it would be. So, we have been opening up the new area in the day time and closing them back into the corral during the evenings. I'm not sure that we need to do that and I'm not sure if that will have an impact on milk production or not. We'll have to let it go for a few days and see how the milk numbers come out.

It has been very hot(in the upper 90's) the past week or two. I thought that might have some affect on how much milk the goats produce, but I haven't seen any trends to show that. Some days have been low, but then others have been very high. Have to keep tracking it.