Sweet Potato
So easy to grow, the humble sweet potato (ipomoea batatus) is one of the most nutritious vegetables in any garden for you and your goat. There is one job that has to be done though to produce good size tubers; cutting back excessive vegetative growth. The herd will push and shove for their share of the prunings.
We have a small plot of sweet potato which produces large quantities of vine for the milking girls and more tubers than our family can eat or give away. We chop the excess tubers into cubes to give as part of the ration for the milking girls.
There have been whole books written on this ground vine; one story I read is of a farmer who planted a large area of pasture for erosion control and to feed his goats. It worked well for erosion but once the goats were on it they ate all the leaf, then the vine and then proceeded to hoove up the tubers and eat them too! The goats did well though.
There was a report on ABC radio a couple of years ago on East Timor. My ears pricked up when the presenter stated how he watched the village children lead their goats to the beach to eat seaweed and then lead them to the sweet buck vines to eat the ends off.
Sweet potato vine and tubers are an excellent source of vitamin A present as beta-carotene, vitamin C and manganese. Also in lesser amounts are copper, fibre, vitamin B6, potassium, iron and trace minerals – depending of soil health. The green leaf has a modest amount of protein at 2 – 3%.
A useful property of this plant is its ability to help eliminate toxic heavy metals from the body such as cadmium, mercury and lead. These heavy metals accumulate in the leaves of lucerne that is grown using chemical fertilizers, so if feeding large amounts of prime lucerne (like most of us), this plant is an excellent tonic. Sweet buck contains peptide called phytochelatins that bind to heavy metals in the body when in the presence of sulphur. By adding sulphur from other plants or supplement to your goat’s diet and feeding sweet potato to your milkers, their heavy metal build up will reduce or be eliminated.
For people in the wet tropics, there is a close relative to sweet buck; Kang Kong (ipomoea aquatic) or Chinese Water Spinach. Planted in damp humid conditions this fast grower can produce 10Kg of wet feed per square metre per year. That’s a lot of feed. The protein is slightly higher that ipomoea batatus with similar properties.
We have a small plot of sweet potato which produces large quantities of vine for the milking girls and more tubers than our family can eat or give away. We chop the excess tubers into cubes to give as part of the ration for the milking girls.
There have been whole books written on this ground vine; one story I read is of a farmer who planted a large area of pasture for erosion control and to feed his goats. It worked well for erosion but once the goats were on it they ate all the leaf, then the vine and then proceeded to hoove up the tubers and eat them too! The goats did well though.
There was a report on ABC radio a couple of years ago on East Timor. My ears pricked up when the presenter stated how he watched the village children lead their goats to the beach to eat seaweed and then lead them to the sweet buck vines to eat the ends off.
Sweet potato vine and tubers are an excellent source of vitamin A present as beta-carotene, vitamin C and manganese. Also in lesser amounts are copper, fibre, vitamin B6, potassium, iron and trace minerals – depending of soil health. The green leaf has a modest amount of protein at 2 – 3%.
A useful property of this plant is its ability to help eliminate toxic heavy metals from the body such as cadmium, mercury and lead. These heavy metals accumulate in the leaves of lucerne that is grown using chemical fertilizers, so if feeding large amounts of prime lucerne (like most of us), this plant is an excellent tonic. Sweet buck contains peptide called phytochelatins that bind to heavy metals in the body when in the presence of sulphur. By adding sulphur from other plants or supplement to your goat’s diet and feeding sweet potato to your milkers, their heavy metal build up will reduce or be eliminated.
For people in the wet tropics, there is a close relative to sweet buck; Kang Kong (ipomoea aquatic) or Chinese Water Spinach. Planted in damp humid conditions this fast grower can produce 10Kg of wet feed per square metre per year. That’s a lot of feed. The protein is slightly higher that ipomoea batatus with similar properties.
