# Vitamin suppliments for goats, home made



## billten (Nov 19, 2010)

I am based in the a remote location in the Philippines. My local vet is about 90 minutes away and is absolutely useless so basically, I am on my own out here. I have a small herd of 10 boer goats and a handful of local ferals. 

I recently kidded and lost 4 of the 11 kids, they came out listless and unable to stand and within a couple of days they died, regardless of the care they were given. 

Diseases aside, I believe that my goats are lacking the essential vitamins that are needed to give them a good chance of kidding well and as such i have been searching for a supplement available locally. This has proven to be a waste of time as no such thing exists here. My goats are nice and fat and are well fed on browsing on local fodder, its just that it seems they have very little reserves against sicknesses.

So, my question is, can anyone recommend first, what are the vitamins a doe needs for a healthy pregnancy and secondly a way of making your own without the pre-packaged formulas available today. I would be most interested in natural feeds (grains, plants, etc) that contain the things that are in the commercial supplements available.

Thanks in advance... Bill in Carcar, Philippines


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## nancy d (Oct 5, 2007)

What comes to mind are three things apart from any vitamins you could make yourself.
Minerals for goats would be the first. With lots of copper. Is there loose minerals available with high copper content?
Without adequete copper you are looking at does not kidding well &weak kids.

Another is worming program but that is almost secondary to copper issues as they dont fight off worm loads as well. 
Due to stress of kidding does can often come up with an overload of worms. This is why we worm the day of kidding & again about 10 days later.
Thirdly, BoSe (selenium & vitamin E) a couple times a year before breeding & right before kidding. It IS a prescription for the injectable so you might have to talk to a vet unless you can order it from out of country, depending on PI laws.

If you can get these into them the combination will really help.


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## billten (Nov 19, 2010)

I have looked around and can find a basic vitamin powder mix. Sadly it does not contain any copper. Also, i cannot get my goats to eat the stuff, it tastes bitter and they hate it. Is there anything i can give them that is high in copper?


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## liz (Oct 5, 2007)

Welcome Bill!

It really stinks to not have any goat specific products available to you....but I think we all have had to improvise more than once.
Black oil sunflower seeds are a great source of selenium.
I found this link for natural sources for copper http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/ ... copper.htm any of the grains, vegetables and fruits can be given to goats, in moderation though until their systems adjust. With the powder you mention, it's better than nothing, try mixing the doseage amount into a "feed" mix of cornmeal, barley, oats and bind it with molasses.If you do a search in the above link you can find food sources for calcium and proteins as well.


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## milkmaid (Sep 15, 2010)

Kelp powder (or seaweed meal) is great, if you can find it. It's full of beneficial minerals - and completely natural! There's some copper in it; it may not be the full requirement, but I'm sure it will help. The goats love it!


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## billten (Nov 19, 2010)

Thanks for all the replies ;-)

Well the thing that jumped out at me from the list of things high in copper is Coconut. We got plenty of coconut i can tell you that ;-)))

I think i'll give them some grated coconut (we pay about $0.20 for each coconut), sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, mixed up with black molasses as all of these items are quite inexpensive and produced locally. Even if it doesn't help their copper count, i'm pretty sure they will enjoy it...


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## liz (Oct 5, 2007)

Another thing you can try would be to check with any area cattle farms, most times any grains or minerals used for cattle will also work for goats.


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## StaceyRosado (Oct 5, 2007)

selenium can be a hard thing to supplement if you can get BoSe 

but like Liz said the BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds - we use them here to feed birds) are a good source of selenium


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## Lexibot (Jul 27, 2010)

Does copper come in tablets? Can't you give them to your goats also?


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