The forage base for a full-size dairy doe
A Nubian doe weighing around one hundred and fifty pounds needs forage totaling roughly three to four pounds of dry feed for every hundred pounds of body weight daily, which works out to about five pounds of hay and browse as her foundation before concentrate enters the picture. Milking does eat toward six or seven pounds of forage when the hay is excellent, because appetite rises with production. Nubians carry long lactations and rich milk, and they do it on hay quality more than hay volume: leafy alfalfa or a strong grass and legume mix supports them in a way that coarse, late-cut hay cannot, no matter how much of it fills the rack.
Grain at the stand, matched to the pail
For a Nubian in milk, a working grain total is two to three pounds a day, divided between milkings and eaten on the stand where you can watch her finish it. Set the amount by her yield over several days rather than a single enthusiastic morning, and by her condition across her back and ribs. A doe milking heavily in early lactation may need the full amount and still lose a little condition, which is normal within reason; a doe in late lactation giving less should have her portion trimmed before she stores the surplus as fat heading into the dry period. Feed changes in small steps over a week, because a dairy rumen rewards gradual management and punishes enthusiasm.
Dry does, and the art of holding condition
Once dried off, a Nubian's ration simplifies to forage, minerals, and water, and the discipline shifts to keeping her from gaining on the memory of milking-season feeding. She should enter her final month of pregnancy in solid, not soft, condition, with a modest grain portion reintroduced as kidding approaches and intake space shrinks. Does who go into kidding overfat kid less easily and milk less hungrily afterward. Splitting the herd at feeding, even with a simple gate and a set order, keeps dry does from stealing the milking string's concentrate and keeps your per-doe numbers honest.
Bucks and kids in a Nubian herd
Bucks are large, strong animals who maintain themselves on forage for most of the year; a small concentrate portion during heavy breeding use is reasonable, withdrawn when the work ends. Wethers should stay essentially grain-free on hay, browse, and minerals, because urinary stones are a real and dangerous risk for them on rich rations, and straining to urinate is an emergency that needs a veterinarian the same day. Kids and growing doelings need the herd's best forage and a measured growth ration, fed where adults cannot shoulder them aside, since the doelings you feed well now become the steady milkers you rely on later.
Do not let the loudest goat set the ration
Nubians announce hunger theatrically, and their long-eared pleading has ended more feeding plans than any hay shortage. Judge instead by weighed feed, milk records, and hands on the doe: ribs felt with firm pressure under a smooth cover, a back that looks level rather than sharp or padded. Keep loose goat minerals available, scrub water vessels often, and offer hay in racks that limit waste. A written ration that survives changes of feeder is what keeps those judgments working, and KinsLe Care Teams provide it by assigning each Nubian group its hay, stand grain, and water duties, each marked done as the milking is finished.