Keeping goats in Sri Lanka
Hello All,
mainly I am writing this blog-post because i would have hoped to find something like this myself when we started creating a little permaculture farm in Bentota, Sri lanka.
There are goats in Sri Lanka, especially near our Beach house in Beruwala, as many muslim people live in this area.
I see them everyday when i go to buy grocery's, walking around freely on the roads, eating rice-leftovers on the street, dry grass bunches on the ground or garbage.
yes, sadly- this is definitely not what they are supposed to eat !
They walk freely- along with their baby-goats (kids) on the roads and their owners do not seem to be afraid they get lost or die because of an accident.
These are the muslim goats- how i personally call them.
We soon found out, if we let our goats walk free around our permaculture farm, we wont have any plants left on the ground and no leaves on the trees up to 2m height.
Its fascinating how goats are so stubborn they try many hours to get the last leave too high for them to reach.
As we have many tiny trees in our nursery and small trees planted across the property we quickly needed to change our way of keeping goats.
We fasten them on a string and let them walk in circles around a tree. It was a good idea until they started to eat the bark of the tree...
And also we needed to unfasten the strings every two hours before they strangled themselves.
Now- 2 years later we have 9 goats/ 2 more already sold (they were male and started to jump on their mothers..:)
After looking around the neighborhood we found out a friend of us had goats too, they lived most of their time in a wooden raised stable and ate industrial cattle feed only from time to time some leaves.
This gave us our main idea.
Our goats reproduced so quick that our first built stable got too small.
We built our new big raised goats house with enclosure.
Its a house where the floor is raised, so the poo and pee goes directly on the floor, and can be easily removed with a shovel from the backside. This lets the goats live in a clean stable all the time with no direct need of everyday cleaning.
To the house we constructed a fixed hedge in which they can walk freely.
For the one male goat we keep, we are currently constructing a small apartment inside the stable -as we want to control the fertilization of the female goats.
As for food we like to stick to nature as much as possible and therefore feed them most of the day with freshly chopped leaves from our own property. Goats don't eat everything you offer but these are the fast regrowing leaves we have on our property: Elbizia/gliricidia and a wild growing tree with big leaves and yellow flowers.
If you want to give a feast feed them mango leaves and jack-fruit leaves.
Also we do feed them a mixture of shop bought cattle feed mixed with dhal leftovers from production. commonly distributed in Sri Lanka as a combo to feed goats.
As for birth attendance and sicknesses with goats we will do another post soon ! Subscribe and keep updated !
mainly I am writing this blog-post because i would have hoped to find something like this myself when we started creating a little permaculture farm in Bentota, Sri lanka.
How to keep goats in Sri Lanka
 |
| some of our goats (twins) |
There are goats in Sri Lanka, especially near our Beach house in Beruwala, as many muslim people live in this area.
I see them everyday when i go to buy grocery's, walking around freely on the roads, eating rice-leftovers on the street, dry grass bunches on the ground or garbage.
yes, sadly- this is definitely not what they are supposed to eat !
They walk freely- along with their baby-goats (kids) on the roads and their owners do not seem to be afraid they get lost or die because of an accident.
These are the muslim goats- how i personally call them.
We soon found out, if we let our goats walk free around our permaculture farm, we wont have any plants left on the ground and no leaves on the trees up to 2m height.
Its fascinating how goats are so stubborn they try many hours to get the last leave too high for them to reach.
As we have many tiny trees in our nursery and small trees planted across the property we quickly needed to change our way of keeping goats.
We fasten them on a string and let them walk in circles around a tree. It was a good idea until they started to eat the bark of the tree...
And also we needed to unfasten the strings every two hours before they strangled themselves.
Now- 2 years later we have 9 goats/ 2 more already sold (they were male and started to jump on their mothers..:)
 |
| mindled strings |
 |
| First small stable |
This gave us our main idea.
Our goats reproduced so quick that our first built stable got too small.
We built our new big raised goats house with enclosure.
Its a house where the floor is raised, so the poo and pee goes directly on the floor, and can be easily removed with a shovel from the backside. This lets the goats live in a clean stable all the time with no direct need of everyday cleaning.
To the house we constructed a fixed hedge in which they can walk freely.
For the one male goat we keep, we are currently constructing a small apartment inside the stable -as we want to control the fertilization of the female goats.
 |
| Our big new stable |
If you want to give a feast feed them mango leaves and jack-fruit leaves.
Also we do feed them a mixture of shop bought cattle feed mixed with dhal leftovers from production. commonly distributed in Sri Lanka as a combo to feed goats.
So here my fast tips for keeping goats in Sri Lanka:
- Build a raised goat house for easy maintenance
- attach a fence for free walking
- feed as much greenery (leaves ) as possible
- feed salt at least every two days
- and supply with everyday fresh water ( a river would be optimum 😂)
As for birth attendance and sicknesses with goats we will do another post soon ! Subscribe and keep updated !
 |
| feeding salt |
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