Our Feeding Calendar, Month by Month
Feeding on our farm follows the seasons: plenty of green fodder from June to September, cutting and storing surplus in October, and living off silage, hay and tree leaves from December to April when fresh grass almost stops. The January to March gap is what most farmers fail to plan for.
Rewritten in plain language on .
Goat farming is a fodder business more than anything else. This is roughly how our year runs in Chitwan. Your months will shift depending on where you are, but the shape is the same across most of Nepal.
The year in four parts
| Period | What the herd eats | What we are doing |
|---|---|---|
| June – September (monsoon) | Green Napier, tree leaves, grazing. Concentrate for growing kids and pregnant does. | Grass is growing faster than the herd eats it. This is when weight goes on — and when worms and pneumonia do the most damage. |
| October – November | Still plenty of green fodder. | Cutting and storing the surplus as silage and hay. If this month is missed, the dry season hurts. |
| December – February | Silage, hay, tree leaves, more concentrate. | Fresh grass has mostly stopped. The job is holding the weight the animals gained in summer. |
| March – May | Early green growth returns, stored feed tapering off. | Vaccinating before the rains, and planting for the coming monsoon. |
The gap that catches people out
What we plant, and why
- Napier and Super Napier — the bulk of the cut fodder. Grows fast, cuts repeatedly.
- Fodder trees along the boundaries — ipil ipil, kutmero, khanyu, tanki, kimbu and moringa. Cheapest protein on the farm, and they keep producing when grass does not.
- Berseem for winter — a legume that grows when other things have stopped.
- Maize — mainly grown to become silage rather than to be fed green.
Tree leaves are the part most new farmers underuse. They cost almost nothing after the first year, goats prefer them to grass, and they are higher in protein than most cut fodder. Planting a line of them along a field boundary pays back for years.
Two rules we do not break
- Roughage stays the base of the diet. Concentrate supplements it, never replaces it. A rumen needs fibre to work.
- Every feed change happens over seven to ten days. A sudden increase in grain causes bloat and enterotoxemia, and both can kill a fast-growing kid within hours. This is the single easiest way to lose your best animal.
Gopal Gautam
Founder, Jagatpur Goat Farm. Breeding Boer goats in Chitwan since 2072 BS.
More from the farm
How We Make Silage for the Dry Months
Chopping, packing and sealing surplus monsoon grass in bags so the herd does not lose weight from December to April. What we do, and the two mistakes that ruined our first batches.
MoneyThree Mistakes That Cost New Goat Farmers the Most
Not the mistakes people expect. Buying the wrong percentage, building the shed last, and counting kids born instead of kids sold — each one quietly takes more money than any feed decision.