Making your own goat feed starts with understanding a simple framework: goats need a base of forage (hay or browse), a grain mix for energy and protein, and free-choice minerals to fill nutritional gaps. The exact recipe depends on whether you’re feeding a pet wether, growing kids, or dairy does in milk, but the building blocks are the same. Most goats eat 2 to 4 percent of their body weight in dry matter each day, so a 150-pound doe consumes roughly 3 to 6 pounds of total feed daily.
Protein Targets by Life Stage
Protein is the single most important number to get right when formulating feed, and goats at different life stages need dramatically different amounts. The minimum crude protein for an adult goat at maintenance is 7% of dry matter intake. That’s easy to hit with decent hay alone. But the demands climb quickly from there.
Young kids need the most protein relative to their size: 16% for very young kids, tapering to about 10% after weaning. Dairy does in early lactation can require up to 20% crude protein, dropping to around 12% as production slows later in the lactation cycle. Meat goats being finished for market generally do well in the 12 to 14% range. Knowing your target lets you choose the right ingredients and proportions.
Choosing Your Forage Base
Forage should make up the majority of every goat’s diet, typically 60 to 80% depending on production demands. Hay quality varies enormously, and the type you choose determines how much grain you’ll need to supplement.
Alfalfa hay cut at early bloom runs about 20% crude protein and 63% total digestible nutrients (TDN), making it one of the richest forages available. Mid-bloom alfalfa drops to 18% protein, and mature alfalfa falls to 14%. Red clover hay sits around 15% protein, while grass hays like timothy or orchardgrass typically land between 8 and 12%. For dairy does or growing kids, alfalfa or a legume-grass mix can supply a large share of the protein budget on its own. For adult wethers or dry does, a good grass hay often meets their modest needs without any grain at all.
If your goats browse on pasture, they’ll consume a mix of leaves, bark, weeds, and brush. Browse is harder to quantify nutritionally, so providing hay alongside pasture ensures consistent intake.
Grain Mix Ingredients and What They Contribute
Grains provide the concentrated energy and additional protein that forage alone can’t always supply. Here are the workhorses of a homemade grain mix, with their crude protein and energy values:
- Whole or rolled oats: 12% protein, 75% TDN. A safe, high-fiber grain that’s gentle on the rumen and a good base for any mix.
- Barley: 12% protein, 81% TDN. Slightly more energy-dense than oats, works well as a co-base grain.
- Corn (whole or rolled): 9% protein, 88% TDN. The highest-energy common grain, but lower in protein. Use it to boost calories without overdoing protein.
- Wheat: 14% protein, 84% TDN. Energy-rich, but can cause digestive upset if overfed. Best kept under 25% of the grain portion.
- Soybean meal (44%): 49% protein, 84% TDN. The go-to protein booster. A small amount raises the overall protein of your mix significantly.
- Black oil sunflower seeds: Added at about 2% of the mix by weight. They contribute fat for coat condition and a modest protein bump, plus goats love them.
- Alfalfa pellets: Around 15 to 17% protein. These bridge the gap between forage and grain, adding fiber alongside protein.
A Practical 16% Protein Mix
A general-purpose grain mix targeting roughly 16% protein works for lactating does and growing kids. One straightforward recipe uses a parts-by-weight system:
- 4 parts alfalfa pellets
- 3 parts rolled oats
- 3 parts barley
- 1 part soybean meal
Add black oil sunflower seeds at about 2% of the total weight. If you’re mixing a 50-pound batch, that’s roughly 1 pound of sunflower seeds stirred in at the end. You can also add a splash of molasses (1 to 2% by weight) to reduce dust, improve palatability, and add a small amount of minerals.
For maintenance animals like dry does, pets, or bucks outside of breeding season, you can drop the soybean meal entirely and shift to a simpler 50/50 oats-and-barley mix alongside grass hay. Their protein needs are low enough that modest-quality forage plus a basic grain handles it.
Balancing Protein With the Pearson Square
If you want to hit a specific protein target with the ingredients you have on hand, the Pearson Square is a simple math tool that tells you exactly how much of each to use. It works with two ingredients (or two groups of ingredients) at a time.
Here’s how it works. Say you want a 14% protein mix using oats (12% protein) and soybean meal (49% protein). Draw a square. Put your target (14) in the center. Put oats (12) in the top left and soybean meal (49) in the bottom left. Now subtract diagonally: 49 minus 14 gives you 35 (the parts of oats you need), and 14 minus 12 gives you 2 (the parts of soybean meal). That means your mix is 35 parts oats to 2 parts soybean meal, or about 95% oats and 5% soybean meal by weight. You can check the math: (0.95 × 12) + (0.05 × 49) = 11.4 + 2.45 = 13.85%, close to your 14% target.
This method is especially handy when ingredient prices change and you want to swap, say, barley for oats without guessing at the protein impact.
Minerals and the Calcium-to-Phosphorus Ratio
Every goat needs a loose mineral supplement available free-choice. Goat-specific mineral mixes (not sheep minerals, which lack copper) provide the trace minerals that grains and hay can’t reliably supply, including copper, selenium, and zinc.
The calcium-to-phosphorus ratio in the total diet should stay at or above 2:1. This ratio is critical for bucks and wethers because an imbalanced diet, particularly one heavy in grain and low in calcium, promotes urinary calculi (bladder stones) that can be fatal. Alfalfa hay is naturally high in calcium, so diets built around alfalfa tend to maintain this ratio easily. If you’re feeding primarily grass hay and grain, you may need to add a calcium source like ground limestone or bone meal.
For wethers and bucks fed grain, adding ammonium chloride to the ration at a rate of about 0.5% of the grain mix by weight helps acidify the urine and prevents stone formation. You can purchase food-grade ammonium chloride from livestock supply stores and mix it directly into the grain.
Processing Grains: Whole vs. Rolled
Goats chew their cud, which means they process whole grains better than cattle do, but some grain still passes through undigested. Research comparing whole and processed grains in goats found that whole barley in particular showed up more frequently in feces, especially when fed alongside high-quality legume hay. The combination of a highly digestible forage and whole grain seems to speed passage through the gut, leaving less time for breakdown.
Rolling or cracking grains improves utilization, though the difference is more pronounced with barley than with oats. If you’re feeding corn, cracking it is worthwhile since whole corn kernels are small and hard enough that many pass through intact. For oats, whole feeding works fine for adult goats because the hull breaks down relatively easily during rumination.
Ingredients to Avoid
Several common plants and feed additives are dangerous for goats. Never include feed intended for other species without checking the label: cattle feed sometimes contains urea (toxic to goats in the concentrations used for cattle), and horse or poultry feed may contain additives like monensin at levels that can kill goats.
On the plant side, goats browsing on pasture face risks from cherry and choke cherry (which release cyanide, especially when wilted), rhododendron, oleander, and nightshade. Oak leaves and acorns contain tannins that cause kidney damage when consumed in quantity. Jimson weed, poison hemlock, and larkspur are all potentially lethal. Milkweed, St. John’s wort, and lantana also cause serious problems. Most goats avoid these plants when well-fed, but starvation or limited forage drives them to eat things they’d normally ignore.
Mold is another major hazard. Moldy hay or grain can contain mycotoxins that cause liver damage, abortion, and death. If hay smells musty or has visible mold, discard it rather than risk feeding it.
Mixing and Storage
For small herds, mixing feed by hand in a clean trash can or large tub works fine. Weigh ingredients rather than measuring by volume, since grains vary considerably in density. A bathroom scale and a bucket get the job done. Mix dry ingredients first, then add molasses last if you’re using it, working it through the grain to coat evenly.
Store mixed feed in sealed containers, preferably metal bins with tight lids, to keep out moisture and rodents. In hot, humid climates, mix smaller batches more frequently rather than storing large quantities that might develop mold. A two-week supply is a reasonable batch size for most small operations. Keep your mineral supplement in a separate covered feeder where goats can access it but rain and manure can’t contaminate it.