I have raised goats for 17 years and in that entire time, the ONLY hay I’ve fed to all classes, including wethers and bucks, is second cutting alfalfa. My herd size in that time has ranged from 4-6 goats all the way up to a high of somewhere around 40.
I’ve only been on buffet for 4 years, so they were 13 years without a free choice source of phos. Where’d I learn it from? All the producers who feed it with no issues. It is a common online myth that alfalfa is dangerous.
By FAR the vast majority of cases of urinary calculi come from too much phosphorus in the diet, so all the recommendations to feed no alfalfa and instead do grass hay + grain are more dangerous than if you’d just fed alfalfa on its own. Most grasses and grains are high in phosphorus and lower in calcium, so by default you’ve got an incorrect calcium to phosphorus ratio. Learn more here.
And while sometimes stones analyzed in UC cases are calcium, I haven’t yet found the data that ties it to a high ca diet. In humans, magnesium is needed to free up calcium from tissues and send it out. Why do we blame alfalfa in goats? Where’s the data?
Here’s a study specifically on calcium carbonate UC that seems to indicate alfalfa has nothing to do with increasing prevalence:
“Diet—The primary types of diet were recorded for 311 of 354 (88%) case goats. One hundred seven of the 311 (34%) goats were fed grass or kept on pasture, 74 (24%) were fed grass hay, 37 (12%) were fed alfalfa hay, 55 (18%) were fed commercial foods (type not specified on the submission forms), 26 (8%) were fed whole grains (eg, corn or wheat), and 12 (4%) were fed hay and pelleted grain mixture (pelleted grains blended with vitamins and minerals).”
https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/247/3/javma.247.3.293.xml
Alfalfa is and will continue to be my #1 choice for hay.
