GOATS are browsers, not grazers and appreciate a wide range of plants and herbs throughout the summer, which may not be available during the winter months. This can vary from region to region over the country.

Where I live, in Cornwall, we are lucky to have a mild climate and seldom experience frosts and rarely snow. As a result many summer plants grow well even during the shortest days of the year and so hand harvesting of the goat's favourite plants is fairly easy for 12 months of the year.

Previously, I lived in East Anglia, where winters are colder and frosts and snow can persist for several weeks. Here it was important to harvest some of the more essential herbage for winter use.

Good hay is essential and we can always supplement the diet artificially with feed additives and supplements such as Caprivite, which is specially prepared for goats, but there is great satisfaction to be had in doing it yourself for free in the certain knowledge that this is the way it was meant to be.

In their natural habitat goats' hail from the warmer climates of the world where herbage grows all the time, to some degree we can imitate this by DIY harvesting of summer plants and herbs. If you are unsure of identifying the various plants, get a book from the library or research them on the Internet. If you are lucky enough to have rough grazing for your goats, watch them and see which plants they prefer.

Nettles (Urtica dioica) Years ago it was widely accepted that the feeding of nettles improved milk yield. Goats will often eat young nettles while they are still growing but prefer wilted ones. Harvesting nettle throughout the summer when it is most prolific is a very useful food source for the goat in the winter months.

Strim or shear them down on a warm day, late in the morning when the dew has gone, and allow to lay on the land for a couple of hours before collecting them and hanging to dry over a fence (where the goats aren't!) or on a wooden pallet or something similar. Turn every time you pass them and in a few hours on a hot day, or a few days when it is less warm, they should be dry enough to stuff in to paper sacks (not plastic) for winter storage. Feed a handful to each goat daily.

If you start to harvest nettles around your field margins early in the season, before they flower, you should get several croppings from the same clump. Nettles are an excellent source of Vitamin C, calcium and iron.

Dead nettle (Lamium album)
Worth harvesting and drying as it is an excellent cure for scour. Half a cupful of the dried plant is my first attack on scour when it is only effecting one animal. Interestingly, it works equally effectively on a constipated animal! If more than one is affected with scour then you should suspect a worm burden such as coccidiosis. Harvest at the point of flowering.

Thistle (Circium vulgare)
Wilted thistles are readily eaten by goats. Dried for winter use they are enjoyed too. Harvest before they go to seed (no fluffy bits!). This will also help keep your pasture free from the proliferation of thistle when they seed each year. Felling them at the point they go to seed is counter productive and spreads the seed over a wide area. Dry similarly to nettles and store in the same way.

Cleavers (Galium aperine)
Cleavers are also known as goose grass, sweet heart and sticky willy. They are very good for cleansing of the lymphatic system, and maintaining skin condition. Geese love these too! Easy to pull up in great quantities and again dry as before and feed in the same manner.

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)
Grows wild in many places, especially wetlands, and can be easily cultivated in the garden. The flower heads have a distinctive honey smell but it is the leaves that we need to harvest. Again, before flowering takes place. Avoid harvesting when flowering as the plant needs to propagate. Cut the stems close to the ground and tie in bundles to dry in a building or in the sunshine depending on the weather. Once dry, store in open paper sacks. The leaves will fall to the bottom of the bag and can be crushed and fed with the course ration. The twigs are greatly enjoyed tied high in the stall for the goats to chew. Apart from being a real treat for your goats, it also contains salicylic acid (aspirin) so is particularly good for the older or arthritic goat.

Wild garlic (Allium ursinula)
Grows in more acidic soils and the leaves should be harvested in April, May or June in cooler parts of the country. Pick before flowering and dry flat on chicken wire or weld mesh sheets (These drying utensils will come in handy again later on when we talk about shearing Angora goats but will also be a perennial godsend if you intend to harvest and dry herbage every year) The leaves may take up to a week to dry and when they have they should be crushed and stored in an airtight container for mixing in the course ration as the meadowsweet leaves. Wild garlic is good for the respiratory system, aids digestion and gut flora and also creates a hostile environment for helminths (worms) - it's pretty nice for seasoning your food too as it is milder than a garlic bulb.

Hips, berries and fruits
Rosehips and hawthorn berries also are worth drying for winter use. They are both part of the rose family. They make excellent titbits for your goats and are nutritious too being high in Vitamin C and also good for digestion.

Pick and dry indoors near a moderate heat source. If you have an Aga, then the bottom oven for a few days is perfect. Store in an airtight container once dried completely. (Dried citrus fruit peel is also enjoyed by some goats and can be dried very well in the Aga using the same method.) A warm airing cupboard will also do the trick but remember to shake them about every so often or they may develop mildew. If this happens at any time, discard the berries or hips as the moulds forming could be damaging to your animals. Just a few every now and again make a special natural treat.

If you are lucky enough to have a small drying machine, then the sky's the limit on drying berries for animals and this can also extend to fruit such as apples. Cored and cut into rings, they will again make a welcome treat for your goat. At the point of harvest, the cores can be fed back to the goats as part of their daily ration. I would suggest no more than 20 a day per animal though to avoid gut imbalance.

Remember to give your goat everything in moderation and make no sudden dietary changes regardless of how much of a glut you may have.

If you are harvesting in the countryside, make sure you only take a small percentage of the plants listed as they are valuable habitats for many species and should not be harvested in such a way that it looks like you have been there. On the other hand , if you take these plants from alongside footpaths, you will be doing walkers a great service particularly with regard to nettles.

All of these harvested and dried plants are best stored in paper sacks in the same kind of environment that you would store your best hay. If they are mouldy, then they have not been stored well enough or perhaps not been dried sufficiently. If this is the case, do not feed them but add to your compost/muck heap where they will do more good than to your goat in this state.

Blue tongue
Much has been written in "Smallholder" on this subject but I would like to make one point with regard to the latest information on this disease.

Global warming or not, we are going to have to get used to the fact that these alien viruses are reaching us thick and fast. As with all things, education and being ahead of the game is the key to success. The JAB incentive should have reached all smallholders by now but if anyone out there with a pet goat/sheep etc is still without a CPH number then Defra information will not be reaching you. It is vital to act now if you have not done so already by contacting your veterinary surgeon regarding vaccination for your goats. Even if you only have one or two "pet" goats this is still the only responsible line to take. By vaccinating you will not only protect your animals, you will be protecting other people's animals and the National Flock/Herd.

Blue tongue could be as devastating on British farming and smallholding as foot and mouth was seven years ago. It is probable that if it affected us on the same scale then commercial livestock farming would simply no longer survive in this country. Sadly, despite the Government laboratories at Purbright being the culprit of last year's foot and mouth mini-outbreak, smallholders were to some extent blamed for its spread by failing to have the necessary experience to identify the disease (see "Countryfile", April 5, 2008). I would vehemently argue this point, but let's not give Defra the opportunity to criticise farming's Great White Hope. That is you - the smallholder is the salt of the earth and the future of livestock farming in Britain. To coin a Second World War phrase "Your Country Needs You!". I rest my case. Happy harvesting!