Productive goats are healthy goats, and every clean bill of health for your herd starts with a nutritious and complete diet. In fact, goats in the wild or roaming pastures often use their natural curiosity to find the nutrients they need from a variety of sources. Give them hay and some goats will turn their noses up, but give a nutritious combination of other silage and feed supplements, and they will chomp it up right before your eyes.
What is the perfect combination of ingredients for their fodder? Research shows that seaweed can and should be one of your nutritional mainstays. Based on their nutritional needs, here are the reasons why feeding kelp to goats can enhance their overall performance, feed efficiency, and immune response.
Boosting Ruminant Health
Though your goats may be consuming lots of food, they may not be using the maximum energy available. Food particles need to do more than shift back and forth between the omasum and the abomasum in their rumen for goats to harness necessary nutrients. They need a healthy feed regimen to unleash the full potential of their food.
Food sources that are rich in fiber, specifically prebiotics, can help ruminants to utilize the energy they consume from their forage. Prebiotics like those in our Acadian Kelp™ products augment the ability of beneficial microbes to metabolize the otherwise undigestible matter in their feed. This allows rumen fermentation patterns to remain stable (even as heat rises) and conserve the energy that they are obtaining from feed ingredients.
Enhancing Immune Response
There is a very fine line that farmers need to walk when caring for the immune health of their animals. Administer antibiotics too liberally and you can inadvertently contribute to the creation of superbugs that can decimate your herd. However, that doesn’t mean you should leave the immune response of your goats up to chance.
A reliable source of prebiotics can help your herd to enhance their natural immunity. Prebiotics like the rich fiber found in Ascophyllum nodosum provide beneficial gut microbes with the resources to thrive, making it difficult for harmful microorganisms to make their home in goats’ digestive tracts.
Want to learn more about how feeding kelp to goats helps their performance and health? Reach out to a member of the Acadian Kelp™ team to learn how.
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