Of course they LOVE the leaves, but refuse to eat the stems. The alfalfa price here varies from $9 for very low end brownish alfalfa, to $14 for nice looking good smelling bundles of sticks with the leaf shake. I pretty much end up with a bale of sticks and maybe 5lbs of leaves. It is always stemmy, and prone to leaf shatter.

I had tried Alfalfa hay in the past, and in my area, I cannot get a consistent supply of good alfalfa. However, they eat all of it and there is no waste. The pellets are expensive, I'll agree to that. And you now how goats are.if they think they are 'getting away' with something, they become obsessed with it The first few hours the slamming does startle them, but after a while, when one is eating and that door slams, the others will come running to eat too. Once you are certain they all know to eat from it, you can take the rubber strap off, and goats being goats - will get both nosey and hungry at the same time and push around it with their nose because they can still smell the pellets just under the doors. I train them by using a rubber strap (instead of the clear shipping plastic they used in the above puc - but the position is correct) to hold the doors up against the front and keep it inside so they can just eat whenever they want to, and they learn that the big metal thing has food in it. I never had an issue with the pellets getting wet, and never had a poo in it after they learned to use the doors. This makes filling much easier than chasing goats away when you are trying to load the thing. I have used this as a fence line feeder also, just cutting a notch out of cattle panels and slipping the part with the feed doors through, and keeping the hopper on the outside of the fence, using two thick heavy black bungee straps to snug it to the fence from the outside. as well as when you hear it non stop it is probably empty, and they are waiting for a miraculous event of the pellets just refilling themselves At the same time, when you don't hear it, it might be a good time to look and see whats going on and why no one is interested in eating at the moment. It *IS* noisy, because when they are done munching, they just let the doors slam off the frame. It is similar in style to a rabbit feeder, and can be used outside once they learn how to flip up the door flaps with their noses. I do note that the pellets encourages them to drink more water, which is never a bad thing I keep both out free choice, for them to eat what they want, when they want it. When they first came, I was going through 3 bales of hay per week, and it took them nearly a month to eat the 200lbs of pellets. Now that they are eating the pellets well, I am going though about a 35lb bale every 10 days of orchard grass hay for 5 LARGE adults, and about 200lbs of pellets every 2 weeks. When the new herd came at first, we were going through a LOT of grass hay, and I was having a hard time getting them to convert to the pellets. Above the feeder I have a hay rack with grass hay in it for their 'browse'. It keeps the pellets clean and fresh, and the goats learn quickly to life the lids with their noses to get the good stuff! My new herd has never eaten pellets, but have quickly learned to do so, and that they are delicious.

I use a large dual hopper hog feeder and fill it with 4 bags of Standlee Alfalfa pellets.

Plastic goat hay feeder