# Rice bran?



## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

While most of my goats are pretty chubby, the doe that I am milking is a little on the thin side.

She's 8 1/2 months into her lactation, I'm milking once a day, and she's giving between 3 3/4# and 4# a day.

I was giving giving her shredded beet pulp on the milk stand, mixed with alfalfa pellets and Purina Goat (16%).

She didn't like the beet pulp and spent most of her time on the stand pushing the grain/beet pulp/grain mix around, picking out what she liked (and pushing out what she didn't), so I eventually just gave up and eliminated the beet pulp.

I then cut back on the alfalfa pellets so that what she is mostly getting on the stand is the grain. She also tends to be a bit of slow eater and I've been trying to give her more time on the stand and more time to finish her grain (even if it means just kind of "hanging out" when I'm done milking, finding things to do while she finishes eating).

The goats all get alfalfa hay twice a day. She is a bit passive and may not be able to compete with the others as well as I would like when it comes to the alfalfa. 

But.......I still would like to put some weight on her. Obviously, the beet pulp wasn't working. But, some years ago, I was given a rescue horse that had been neglected and who was very skinny. I supplemented her with rice bran, top dressing her grain with it - not even very much, really. And she put on a lot of weight and ended up looking really well, sleek and fat.

I've googled rice bran and goats and I'm getting a lot of mixed information (some people saying it killed their goats, others saying they've used it for years with great results), so I thought I would see if anyone here has any real experience, pro or con, with it for goats.

My doe has been wormed. She has access to a loose mineral. I just had her at my friend's to be bred, and while my friend thought she definitely wasn't carrying any extra weight, she also didn't think, all things considered (length of lactation, amount of milk she's still giving), that she was too thin and that there was anything to be concerned about.

So........has anybody here used rice bran for a not-so-easy-keeper? Did it help? Is there anything to be concerned about with giving it to a gestating doe? 

Also, how much? It seems like I remember not having to give very much to the horse to make a difference (but it was some time ago) - it seems like a goat would need quite a bit less.


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## Donna1982 (Jun 14, 2011)

I have no advice but wanted to say thank you for asking this. I've been thinking about adding to my girls grain on the stand. I kept meaning to ask and kept forgetting to or have been to busy.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Donna1982 said:


> I have no advice but wanted to say thank you for asking this. I've been thinking about adding to my girls grain on the stand. I kept meaning to ask and kept forgetting to or have been to busy.


Yes, and I also would like to know if there's any difference between the powder (which is what I gave the horse ) and the pelleted, which I have no experience with......other than the price - I checked prices the other day, and the pelleted is quite a bit cheaper.


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## thaiblue12 (Feb 14, 2007)

Here the pelleted was more expensive then the powder. My vet told me to buy this for an ill goat, she hated it. The bag cost $22 and she would not touch it. I gave it to the others since Crystal said she used it in place of BOSS and it worked well, mine did not care for it too much. Never really saw them eat much of the powder or do them any good, the chickens seemed to like it, but then again they like to eat goat baby poop and bugs


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

I think when I priced it recently that I was told the stuff that I gave the horse (a powder) was around $40.00 a bag now (25 pounds?) and the pelleted stuff was less than $20.00.

Maybe I got it backwards?

I'm thinking that I'm going to try a bag of whichever is cheaper. She really is a picky eater - there are very few things that she will even eat from my hand, blueberry bagels she likes, animal crackers she doesn't, for example - so she may not even eat it.

If she doesn't, my old doe, who eats _anything _I give her, would probably benefit from it so it won't go to waste.

I just want to make sure that it's not going to hurt anybody.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Well, that was a bust. lol

I just got around to buying a bag of rice bran yesterday. I thought I was buying pellets (that's what I was told at the feed store), but it is most definitely a powder. Not too terribly expensive - around $17.00 for a fifty pound bag.

Good thing it wasn't too expensive.......because she _hates_ it. Even my old doe, who is kind of a pig and pretty much scarfs down anything I give her, left some in the bottom of her food dish. My little 8 1/2 month doeling (Aspen) also didn't like it.

I might have started out by trying to give too much - 1/4 cup. That doesn't sound like much but it really does spread out in the grain. So, I'll try again tomorrow but with much less.

I'd really like to get some weight on this doe but I don't want to amp up the grain necessarily. I'm only milking once a day and I'll be needing to dry her up in another couple of months.


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## Frosted Mini's (Nov 29, 2012)

I feed a fat supplement to get my grain ration up to 5% fat. BOSS, flax, rice bran, or any vegetable oil will work. I use ground flax because it is the cheapest, besides oils. The goats will get used to it, it just takes time. I recently heard of another product, similar to flax, I think it is called Camelina...suppose to be tasty for just about any species of animals. I might give it a try, since there is a mill near me that sells it; it is also higher in protein than flax.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

I can get flax seed fairly cheaply at the grocery store that I shop at that has an awesome bulk food section.

Can I just use the seeds "as is," or should I grind it in the blender first?

I was giving BOSS, too, but again, this doe is really picky and she was pushing it out of her food dish - along with a good chunk of her grain. I decided it was a little too expensive to end up on the ground for the chickens.

I will probably keep trying to push the rice bran on her for awhile. She tried pushing it out at first but when she realized it was pretty well mixed in, she just refused to eat her grain altogether. Hopefully, over time, she'll get over it. If not, I'll have to try something else.

Oh, and do you just put the oil on the grain? Approximately how much? I have both canola and olive.


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## dbarjacres (Feb 2, 2004)

I found my goats won't eat any meal/powder type additive. But they eat anything that's added to their grain that is actual grain size pieces. I just bought the Manna Pro MaxEGlo rice bran pellets and have it mixed in with rolled barley and whole oats and they eat it just fine.


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## Frosted Mini's (Nov 29, 2012)

What else is in your grain mix? It doesn't take much oil at all, because it is 100% fat...I believe the rice bran is about 20% fat, right? You don't want to overdo fat, because it will start smothering the rumen flora (obviously not good!), but up to 4-5% of their total diet is fine (I just do 5% in their grain, and my girls look pretty good). As for your beet pulp-did you have the pellets or the shredded kind? My goats don't like the pellets, I've tried dry and soaked, but they do like shreds dry. There are always picky goats...I just ignore them. LOL. Guess I'm kind of a hard **s. If a goat isn't staying in good condition on my feedplan, they can move on.  If you give me the % fat in the feed you are using, and how much grain you give, I can figure out for you how much oil to put on the feed, and yes, you can just drizzle it on.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Well, she actually did a lot better with the rice bran today.

Basically, I just took the grain she didn't eat yesterday - she had maybe eaten an inch or so down into it before she realized there was something in it she didn't want - and today just added more grain to bring it back up to the top. 

I didn't add anymore rice bran because there was still most of what I had given her yesterday in the grain she left. She pretty much ate the whole thing - left a few crumbs at the bottom, which is common for her.

So, tomorrow, she'll get a fresh dish of grain and alfalfa pellets and I will add about half the rice bran that I did yesterday.

My old doe ate it much better today, too. I gave her half of what I gave her yesterday and she ate the whole thing.

To be honest, I'm the only one concerned about this doe. When I took her to be bred, I asked my friend with the buck what she thought, and while she didn't think she was too fat by any means, she pointed out that she's not a big girl, kind of petite actually, she's 8 1/2 months into her lactation, and she's still cranking out almost a half gallon in a single daily milking and she just didn't think there was anything to worry about.

The girl who comes and helps me with their feet just thinks I'm nuts.

I have a dry Lamancha, though, who is much bigger all around than Zilli and probably has thirty pounds or more on her.



dbarjacres said:


> I just bought the Manna Pro MaxEGlo rice bran pellets and have it mixed in with rolled barley and whole oats and they eat it just fine.


Well, I _thought_ I was getting pellets. The guy at the feed store said I was getting pellets.

The bag it came in is just a plain brown bag with a white tag on the bottom that says "Rice Bran 50 pounds."



Frosted Mini's said:


> What else is in your grain mix? It doesn't take much oil at all, because it is 100% fat...I believe the rice bran is about 20% fat, right? You don't want to overdo fat, because it will start smothering the rumen flora (obviously not good!), but up to 4-5% of their total diet is fine (I just do 5% in their grain, and my girls look pretty good). As for your beet pulp-did you have the pellets or the shredded kind? My goats don't like the pellets, I've tried dry and soaked, but they do like shreds dry. There are always picky goats...I just ignore them. LOL. Guess I'm kind of a hard **s. If a goat isn't staying in good condition on my feedplan, they can move on.  If you give me the % fat in the feed you are using, and how much grain you give, I can figure out for you how much oil to put on the feed, and yes, you can just drizzle it on.


There is no nutritional label on this bag of rice bran so I don't know what the fat percentage is.

I feed Purina Goat Chow. It is 2.5% crude fat and she gets a little over two pounds of that on the milk stand. She also gets a little bit of alfalfa pellets in the dish. She really likes the alfalfa pellets and I used to give her about half and half the pellets and the grain but when I started to be concerned about her weight, I cut way back on the pellets and made up for it with more grain because I figured there would be more calories in the grain. Mostly now I just cover the bottom of her food dish (an inch or so) with the alfalfa pellets and then put the grain on top so that she pretty much has to work her way through the grain to get to the pellets.

She also gets alfalfa hay twice a day.

I was giving her the shredded beet pulp and I think it helped somewhat. But, again, she didn't really like it and spent most of the time on the stand pushing the grain around, trying to avoid it. She did manage to get some down, and like I said, I think it helped a little but I also think for it to have made much of a difference, she would have needed to eat more and I'm pretty sure that wasn't going to happen.

I've decided, though, that if the rice bran doesn't work out, I will likely go back to the beet pulp because I guess even helping a little is better than nothing.


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## farmer9989 (Apr 22, 2008)

try a sprinkling of water to make it not as dry


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## CaliannG (Apr 29, 2005)

Rice bran is approximately 25% fat, 60% carbs, and 15% protein. However the carbs are mostly Vit. B rich fiber. Over half of the calories in Rice Bran come from fat.

It is also a good source of Vitamin E, Magnesium, Manganese, Potassium, and Iron.

I have found, however, that my goats prefer the pellets to the powder. But that is not just with rice bran...they completely prefer pellets to powder in ANYTHING...they inhale the powder while they are eating and it makes them sneeze. My baking soda feeder would be EMPTY every day if they just compressed that stuff into pellets.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Well, she's actually doing pretty well with it now.

Today she got a little less than the 1/4 cup I started with on the first day and she ate it all.

There is a bit of a problem with the powder falling through the grain and to the bottom of the dish. I'm thinking tomorrow that I will lightly sprinkle the grain with a little canola oil so the rice bran powder will stick to the grain instead of falling through.

So, if she continues to eat the rice bran well, what should be the amount I should aim for for the best results, without overdoing it?


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Canola oil is nasty. Humans shouldn't eat canola oil, either.

Use corn oil or something less toxic.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Alice In TX/MO said:


> Canola oil is nasty. Humans shouldn't eat canola oil, either.
> 
> Use corn oil or something less toxic.


I didn't know that about canola. That and olive oil is all I buy. I guess I'll have to do some research.......

No corn oil on hand but I can certainly buy it next time I go to the store.


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## Frosted Mini's (Nov 29, 2012)

Sorry for the delay in response! If rice bran is 25% fat, and you are trying to get about a 5% fat grain ration, mixed into a 2.5% fat ration, feeding 2 lbs total, you need 1.8 lbs of grain, and 0.2 lbs of rice bran. I'm guessing you'd be just fine to up the r.b. to 0.3 lbs in something that is a little over 2 lbs of grain.

If you are going to use oil...in a 2 lb total mix, it would be 1.95 lbs of grain, and 0.05 lb of oil (since oil-all oil-is 100% fat, or near to)...so, probably would be easier to mix a little bigger batch than one feeding worth.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Frosted Mini's said:


> Sorry for the delay in response! If rice bran is 25% fat, and you are trying to get about a 5% fat grain ration, mixed into a 2.5% fat ration, feeding 2 lbs total, you need 1.8 lbs of grain, and 0.2 lbs of rice bran. I'm guessing you'd be just fine to up the r.b. to 0.3 lbs in something that is a little over 2 lbs of grain.
> 
> If you are going to use oil...in a 2 lb total mix, it would be 1.95 lbs of grain, and 0.05 lb of oil (since oil-all oil-is 100% fat, or near to)...so, probably would be easier to mix a little bigger batch than one feeding worth.


Ok, maybe this is a dumb question, but when you talk about a total percentage of fat at 5%, does that include for both maintenance purposes and for putting on weight?

Or, can you go a little higher than that 5% if you want to put weight on the goat?


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## CaliannG (Apr 29, 2005)

Different people have different feeding philosophies. I try to keep my grain rations at 40% total fats.....which when you take into account their hay, browse, alfalfa pellets, and everything else, makes fat about 5% of their total diet.

No goat on my property is obese, but none of them are skinny either.

The main thing is that if you want a goat to put on weight, you add fat to her diet.


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## Frosted Mini's (Nov 29, 2012)

You mainly don't want to go above 5% fat in their total diet, because you are going to start suffocating rumen flora, not good (there are such things called "calcium soaps", which are calcium attached to a fat that you can feed in higher amounts than 5%, but you probably don't want to get involved with that, and I'm sure they don't come cheap anyway). I just KISS and have just the grain part of the diet be 5% fat. Fat helps put weight on because it is the most energy dense nutrient. It has about 2 1/4 times as much energy per gram as carbs or protein (you don't want to use protein for energy, because it is expensive, causes acidosis in higher amounts, makes them excrete more ammonia, and they take energy input to get energy output...kreb's cycle and all that good stuff).

I would not be feeding any concentrates (grain, fats, etc.) at all to a goat for maintenance only. A goat that is not producing (maintenance-only supporting their own body functions) would be one that is dry and not pregnant (or early pregnant).


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

Frosted Mini's said:


> You mainly don't want to go above 5% fat in their total diet, because you are going to start suffocating rumen flora, not good (there are such things called "calcium soaps", which are calcium attached to a fat that you can feed in higher amounts than 5%, but you probably don't want to get involved with that, and I'm sure they don't come cheap anyway). I just KISS and have just the grain part of the diet be 5% fat. Fat helps put weight on because it is the most energy dense nutrient. It has about 2 1/4 times as much energy per gram as carbs or protein (you don't want to use protein for energy, because it is expensive, causes acidosis in higher amounts, makes them excrete more ammonia, and they take energy input to get energy output...kreb's cycle and all that good stuff).
> 
> I would not be feeding any concentrates (grain, fats, etc.) at all to a goat for maintenance only. A goat that is not producing (maintenance-only supporting their own body functions) would be one that is dry and not pregnant (or early pregnant).


I only feed grain to the one doe that I am milking - with the exception of my old doe who will be fifteen in a few months and I give her an approximate 60/40 (70/30?) mix of alfalfa pellets and grain once a day - basically alfalfa pellets with a couple handfuls of grain. I have also been giving my 8 1/2 month old doeling alfalfa pellets with a handful of grain just to get her used to a bit of a routine on the milk stand once a day for when she gets bred this fall.

Everyone else just gets alfalfa hay twice a day.


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## CaliannG (Apr 29, 2005)

~smiles~ Don't worry, Zilli. Doelings are still growing, so they are not "maintenance only", as they are having to put a lot of energy into growing.

Senior does, like other senior critters (including us!) are also not "maintenance only"...they need a higher energy diet to support their aging body. 

~grinz~ The only time I *don't* feed grain is if I have a dry doe who is not pregnant or growing. And how often does THAT happen? They dry up about 2 months before they are due to kid, and by then, I need to start feeding them grain to support their pregnancy. Does end up getting grain from the time they can eat it until the time they die...unless I choose not to breed one for a year or so to give her a break AND I am not milking her through.

Wether and bucks, on the other hand, seldom get it. Bucks only during rut, and wether only for a treat or when I am wanting to get them to go someplace they don't want to go...like in the back of the van to be transported somewhere.


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## Zilli (Apr 1, 2012)

CaliannG said:


> ~smiles~ Don't worry, Zilli. Doelings are still growing, so they are not "maintenance only", as they are having to put a lot of energy into growing.
> 
> Senior does, like other senior critters (including us!) are also not "maintenance only"...they need a higher energy diet to support their aging body.
> 
> ...


lol

I don't keep bucks (BT, DT) but I do have a number of wethers. One pygmy wether is around twelve or thirteen (I lost track on some of these oldsters) and I would like to supplement him but I am so terrified of UC that I don't (I've never had an issue with UC and I don't want to start now!).

And there is his twin sister and two other senior does (one pygmy and one pygmy/Togg/Nubian/Saanen cross - all in that twelve/thirteen range) that are getting to the point that I think they should be supplemented as well - maybe not this winter, but by next winter for sure.

Kind of hard to work out the dynamics when they're all fed together, though.


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## Frosted Mini's (Nov 29, 2012)

Thank you, Calliann, I had totally failed to mention growing as a productive stage! I think a lot of goat owners dry up their gals for much longer than they need to, and so, those are the does that don't need grain.  Also, if you are keeping dry yearlings, you certainly don't need to be giving them concentrates past probably about 7-8 months until they are 100 days pregnant as a coming 2-year-old. They would be obese!

My does just get grain in the stand...if kids are in the pen I will make a creep feeding pen that the adults can't get into. Then you don't have to worry about feeding grain to the "wrong" goats.


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