I have two acre land and I am planning to enter into Goat Farming. Would like to know is it viable to go with 10-20 goats as a beginner with open land fodder cultivation with Hydroponic machines (optional). Since if the land is not able to cultivate enough fodder then I cannot let the goat eat only dry fodder.
Also what is the cost of 1 KG high quality germination seeds for Hydroponic?
I heard that Hydroponic is a costly option. Please share if anyone using hydroponic as an alternate solution.
Hydrophonic Fodder Machine would burn a big hole in your pocket unless you hit a good bargain on a used one.Secondly power for use of hydrophonic is commercial in Tamil Nadu and trust me these machines eat a lot of power. And the minimum capacity machine as far as I know is a 50Kg one and that as such costs around 7.5Lakhs to 10 lakhs I believe including the AC’s.
My suggestion is to grow CO - 4 hybrid napier grass in open land or source grown fodder locally since your volume would be less initially.
You can approach TNAU for CO - 4 seeds. I read somewhere in Kerala farmers sell this @ Rs.1.50/kg even.But this is for reference as transporting it from Kerala would be costly.
Have a mix of green fodder so that throughout the year you have something to offer to the goats. CO4 slips are provided by the KVKs free of charge and the govt provides money for growing them. One thing I can tell is you will atl east get the CO4 slips free.
It is also available in the market at the rates mentioned by Saravanakumar.
You can grow a vareity of green feed as mentioned by a few of our friends below is napier, malberry, horse gram, azzolla, Agasse ( in Telugu ) don’t known the name in english, Janub ( in Telugu )