So yesterday I decided to start purchasing discount food.
As we're generally on a tight budget, we can't usually afford just getting whatever we want whenever we want. We take what we can get and work with it.
So when I got boxes of discounted fruits and veggies yesterday - most of the items of which are very ripe or tipping over into being over ripe, I did some food processing.
Of the boxes I got a whole bunch of oranges - like a box full.
Source: Mine.
I'm sitting here thinking to myself, what exactly am I going to do with these orange peels?
Cause I'm going to start making cleaners with vinegar with some of them but there's a lot. And there's going to be plenty more moving forward.
So I google if orange peels can be fed to goats - and sure enough not only do they enjoy orange peels, they're good for goats.
They contain vitamins such as A, E & C as well as minerals like Calcium, Potassium, Copper & Magnesium.
You can find a fairly thorough explanation from Animal Hype Here.
I also hit google scholar and found a link from Science Direct that in milking ewes - orange essential oil at quantities of 150-300 mg a day for 60 days can increase milk production and may be recommended as a daily nutritional supplement.
(Not goats, I know but ruminant nonetheless...)
I also found a study on IOP SCIENCE that showed Boer goats fed 1% sweet orange peel essential oil had improved semen quality including more motility & vitality.
Lastly I also found a study on AJOL that showed including sweet peel meal into Red Sotoko goats diets can increase the digestibility of feed and lowers food intake however it apparently slows the growth compared to the control group.
(This might be good to know if you don't want your animals growing too fast from processed feeds since this often results in health problems.)
Interesting stuff none the less and as always things are good in moderation.
You know your goats best but if you have some orange peels kicking around you may want to consider chucking them into your goat pen and letting them munch away!