Hi all! Fall is upon us. Our trees here in Southern Ohio are covered in beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow, green, and brown. It is quite a sight to behold, and fall is my favorite season. I love the way the leaves smell and the smell in the air. I love the "crunch" of dry leaves under foot. I love the fanfare of Halloween. I love apple cider, hooded sweatshirts, pumpkin flavored food and drinks, Indian corn, fall foliage, and the sound of leaves rustling in trees during a light breeze. Ahhhh... I told you it was my favorite!
Unfortunately, we all know that fall is also the harbinger of winter. We all know that once the splendor of fall is over, Jack Frost will be nipping at our noses. For procrastinators like me, fall also means that you're quickly running out of time to make those oh so important winter preparations.
I'm also the type that tends to put the cart before the horse. It doesn't make sense and it usually results in hurried preparation (I do not recommend this behavior, but I'm thinking it's more of a disease for me! :D ), but all the same it is what it is. This "illness" caused me to buy some very cute little goats without much forethought into winter prep. Heck it was spring when we brought these guys home, so winter was quickly becoming a bad dream. Well, uh-hmm, it's a reality now. And as vampires say, reality bites.
Among the many activities we must partake in to prepare for winter, is buying and storing hay for our goats. Like most ruminants, the goat requires daily hay in its diet. This is partly for nutrition, but mostly for fiber/roughage to aid in digestion.
Our two goats consume roughly one bale of hay every 2 weeks. Sometimes they will eat one in one week. Keep in mind my goats are small. At any rate, it is an essential part of their diet and it is important to try to stock up on hay when feeding any hay eating animal during cold weather months. For this time around we purchased 20 bales of hay. It is a timothy, clover, orchard grass mix. It smells so nice and it still has plenty of nice green pieces in it. We are hoping this will get us through until people begin cutting hay again next year. We may buy 5-10 more in December based on our useage rate of our current stockpile. This hay is a bit loosely baled compared to what we normally get, which may mean we will go through it faster.
We have it stored in our garage right now (which is less than ideal because hay is messy!), but we are hoping to get it better situated once we complete a barn. (Ha ha)
At any rate, wish us luck this winter! We'll do the same for you! Thanks for reading!
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