Explore Average Daily Gain of Warm Season Perennial Grasses for Commercial Meat Goats

Project Overview

FS23-357
Project Type: Farmer/Rancher
Funds awarded in 2023: $14,700.00
Projected End Date: 03/31/2025
Grant Recipient: Action Jackson Farms
Region: Southern
State: Kentucky
Principal Investigator:
Fatima Jackson
Email
Action Jackson Farms

Commodities

  • Agronomic: grass (misc. perennial)
  • Animals: goats

Practices

  • Animal Production: animal protection and health, feed/forage, feed management

    Proposal summary:

    The project plan is to use fields that have been barren for close to twenty years with more native grass establishments and little fescue stands. These fields will need seeding and fertilization to establish stand. Fields will be divided into one to two acre plots to plant the different warm season grasses. Four grasses will be considered for this project due to their history of palatability with small ruminants especially goats. These grasses are: Bermudagrass, Switchgrass, Gamagrass and endophyte free fescue. 

    Project objectives from proposal:

    The plan is to establish these grasses in the first year in four separate fields and graze each field in the summer of the second year for the research project by subdividing the fields into smaller lots for rotational grazing. A control group of goats will be divided into four groups with at least 10 to 20 head per group to graze each field that summer. Their weights will be recorded before the first rotation in each field and at the end of the last rotation of each field that summer.

    Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.