goat house?

[mcfarlandteresa]

 

[mcg30_40]

We keep our goats in movable dog pens till we can get the fence built this spring. Inside we put dog houses for them, large dog houses. We have also used a shower stall turned on it's side and an old water trough turned over with a hole cut into it. Goats are not picky as long as it protects them from rain. Something that looks nice is great but not necessary. Hopefully we will be upgrading soon to actual sheds. We are building 8ft long by 4 ft wide by 4 or 5 ft tall mobile sheds for ours. We can take a tractor and move them to wherever they need to be in the fields (we have 20 acres).

 

[redhen]

hi...we have a 8x8 shed for ours...

 

[Wildsky]

Our goat shares a barn with the horse. Its 20x20 fully enclosed with a small door just wide enough for the fat horse butt.

In summer we open up another door on the other side of the barn so it is nice and airy.

 

[conny63malies]

A friend of mine got a poly dome from a ranch auction.
looks just like this
http://www.polydome.com/High_Door_Calf_Nursery.html

 

[hollyk]

I don't know what breed of goat you have- that makes a difference I gather. We have meat goats. We have frustrated ourselves with several different types of shelters- some quite nice I might add- and they only use the most basic of shelters if it is 20 degrees with a 30 mile and hour wind out of the north. Rain does not bother them. Rain in freezing temps does not bother them. Their favorite shelter is to pile up under the feeders. Can't explain it, but they are happy and healthy. We also mostly free-range just supplement in the winter. From my experience, they seem to like a low roof with a wind break.

 

[Chirpy]

I finally got some pictures of what I've done for my goats shelter.

Trust me... it ain't pretty but it is working very well. The reason I like it the best... it cost us nothing as we had everything (including the straw bales) laying around.

For my ND's (Nigerian Dwarfs)

I had started with just straw bales stacked up against the front of a dog house but I forgot to mention to my girls that it wasn't a new playground. They destroyed the straw bales within two weeks by jumping and playing around on them.

So we needed something far more substantial.

Thus, we just put together two unused shed doors standing on their long sides, then we just screwed an old flat board on top. We placed the doors along side a dog igloo doghouse and then stuffed straw all around the doghouse to stop any airflow. (This would be the straw that had been in bales two weeks before

)

Here's looking into the tunnel - you can kinda see the igloo dog house at the end.

Of course, the girls had to check out what I was doing...

There are two cinder blocks on the ground up front, on the right of the tunnel to make it easier for my little girl to jump up onto the roof from that side.

You know how the best laid plans often fail or... don't happen? Well, we didn't get our goat shed put together before winter this year so I had to make due with the barn stall. None of my barn stalls have doors on them so the animals have inside/outside access 24/7. That's great except in a snow storm I'd end up with a foot or more of snow inside the goats stall because of where it was located compared to the outside wall of the barn.

Again, I used 'junk' that we had laying around (old doors and wood). I used the straw bales to make a tunnel and drove rebar and wooden garden stakes through the bales to 'attach' them to each other. Then, I used two t-posts pounded in tightly against them to stabilize them. The first thing I found out is that my horses thought it was great fun to reach over from their stall and pick up and throw the straw bales around.

So, that was when I got an old door and put it between the two stalls so the horses can't reach the bales anymore (poor horses

)

Now for the inside... I used old doors and wood to make a 'wall' between the horses stall and the goat stall. This was solely to keep the wind from blowing through the horses stall door and into the goats stall. I had to put two smaller pieces of wood at the top of each stall door to help stop the wind/snow from blowing in also.

There ya go.. not pretty but free and working very well.