Can goats eat feed containing bovatech?

Question

It is heifer feed.

Answer 1

It's ok since goats and cows are runimants.  However, since the bovatech contains estrogenic compounds, you might not want to feed it to buck goats during breeding season or young, growing bucks.

Answer 2

yes

Answer 3

There is nothing in bovatech that would harm goats.

Answer 4

I raise meat goats.  I have over 100 goats.  I wouldn't feed that stuff to my goats if someone paid me to do it.

First, Alpharma, the manufactuor or bovatech, tests it on horses, to see how much of it the horses have to eat before it kills them.  

It's manufactured to get the fastest growth possible, out of cattle (not goats).  

If your goats eat it, they will depend on the medication for immunity to coccidia, instead of developing their own natural immunities.  That means if you stop feeding it, or sell the goats to someone else who does not use the feed, there will most likely be a massive die of off the goats, as they will have no immunity to coccidia.

If you are suffering a lot of kid deaths due to coccidia, you need to change your managment practices, instead of giving them medication.  

After I moved to Idaho, I suffered a lot of kid deaths due to coccidia.  I changed my manegment practices, and I'm back down to zero deaths from coccidia.  You can control it with just proper managment.  There's no need to dump medication into your goats.

By the way, if you have milk goats, I'm not sure it is legal to feed bovatech them, if you sell, or give away any of the milk, butter, or cheese.  You'd have to do research on that yourself.  Also with meat goats, since bovatech has probably not been studied for use in the goats, the withdrawl time of the medication prior to slaughter may be untermined.  Which in effect means that it is also illegal to feed to goats bound for slaughter.  You'd have to do more research on that also.

If the withdrawl time, prior to slaughter is more than two weeks, you will begin to suffer coccida death in your goats.  It takes 10-14 days for coccidia to build up to leathal levels in goats.  So if the medication requires a 30 day withdrawl period before slaughter, you will probably loose your entire kid crop.  The goats will be dependant on the medication to keep coccidia at bay.  Once off the medication, their immune systems will be completely overwhelmed.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Raising meat goats since 1999

Answer 5

I had to look up that product and all I could find initially (and repeated over and over) was that it is lethal to horses. At that point I stopped and would only recommend to you that you really need to talk to your Veterinarian before you do anything. Consider and discuss whether, and for what reason you want to feed a product like that, a strong chemical hormone, to your goat(s). If you have just one or two I would imagine that you consider them your pride and joy, your babies. Are you planning on consuming goat milk products and what effect do those chemicals have on this. Are you pushing for rapid growth by inducing over eating with this hormone, and if so why and how important is it in light of adverse health issues. There are other ways. If you would like I can give you some info on better ways to do that; better milk fat content at less cost (especially in the off season northern cold) and for all animals dependent on grazing, just give me an email address. I only share that info on a controlled basis as I spent a lot of time on the process over a lot of years. Later!