Experiment on Goat Farming Integrated into the Agroforestry-Style Orchard in Southeast Goiano

Abstract

The introduction of a goat stock in the area where the agroforestry orchard has been implanted since mid-2011, considers the premise of being able to transform a problem with the spontaneous exotic grasses into solution in the form of food for goats. However, goats feed only on the higher parts of the grasses. In between the lines of the orchard, cereal crops and forage legumes for caprine nutrition are tried. The establishment has at its disposal Brachiaria spp. of spontaneous and successional growth of old agrarian systems that existed in that area, currently occupied with the agroforestry orchard. From the preparation of the soil to the crop, it was not possible to control the regrowth of the grass that one wants to feed the capril and to be able to make a cover management of the soil and control (almost) fully its presence, replacing the grasses with other species of forage for capillary grazing. The methodology used for the main crops implanted for feed formation and with measurements by clinical and laboratory tests to quantify the health conditions of the animals and the milk to be produced. The experiment aims to serve as a benchmark for small farmers dedicated to milk production and who want alternatives to the production of milk. If it intends to record and produce information on the impacts of grazing, trampling and soil compacting and pasture recovery due to the management with small ruminants and the other impacts in Cerrado environments.