Goat housing, does anyone have pics of theirs?

[StormyMoon]

I don't know if I would want my goats high off the ground they act suicidal lol when they are young they have no fear of heights.

 

[craftymama86]

Lol. We may end up just building one similar to yours but with some kind of siding so it will, somewhat, match our chicken coop.

 

[craftymama86]

Do you change out the hay often? We have a pallet that looks about the same size as the one in your picture, definitely use that....

 

[weimarmama]

Our doe/kid house is built on a slope so that highest side is 3 1/2 - 4 ft off the ground, but there's no doorway on that side of the building. Where the doorway is it's 2 ft at the most. But they love to crawl under there. I just came in from checking on one of the girls that's shut up in a stall & due & there were 6 asleep under the house. I'd prefer to sleep inside if I were them, but oh well

Most of ours are also like every other goat & love to climb on everything they can find, from the igloo, rocks & logs we have for them out there, & even one of the trees.

I just remembered that when we got our first goats, our buck used a large doghouse that belonged to the Bloodhounds we had when I was little & we put up a 3 sided temporary shelter with a top for the does.

Goats are like chickens they're addictive, so when we built the girls' house we made it a little bigger than we needed at that time. Now, I wish it was even bigger & we're planning on extending it & adding a little porch off the house for them to climb on (hopefully this year

).

 

[StormyMoon]

Quote:
I have a very sensitive nose, so I give it the sniff test if it smells bad it goes to the compost pile.
It varies depending on how much time they have to spend in the shelter during the winter I changed it often every few days to 1 time a week.
Depends on how much mud they bring in too cause wet hay can grow mold and it causes breathing issues , that goes with any place though if there is a lot of rain.

During the summer I change it out less. People say bucks make bad smells but I have only 1 buck he is 1 year old I haven't smelt the bad odor people talk about yet. But boy my chickens stink the barn up and I have to clean it every 2 days.

Editing to say: The pallet is a pallet crate it came with the top frame connected to the bottom it is 8 ft long 4 ft wide and 3 ft tall
Originally it looked like this.

 

[craftymama86]

Quote:
I have a very sensitive nose, so I give it the sniff test if it smells bad it goes to the compost pile.
It varies depending on how much time they have to spend in the shelter during the winter I changed it often every few days to 1 time a week.
Depends on how much mud they bring in too cause wet hay can grow mold and it causes breathing issues , that goes with any place though if there is a lot of rain.

During the summer I change it out less. People say bucks make bad smells but I have only 1 buck he is 1 year old I haven't smelt the bad odor people talk about yet. But boy my chickens stink the barn up and I have to clean it every 2 days.

Editing to say: The pallet is a pallet crate it came with the top frame connected to the bottom it is 8 ft long 4 ft wide and 3 ft tall
Originally it looked like this.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/56092_066.jpg

I guess the sniff test is pretty popular when it comes to such things, lol.

So where'd you get that pallet crate?

That would be nice, make building a little easier, haha. I am glad though that we have the pallet we have. We do have a couple others but one is larger than the other and there's no way, right now, I'm gonna take them apart, lol.... This will be a fun project, we built our coop and I enjoyed that. It's a tad bit stressful this time though b/c we were prepared and had the coop already built BEFORE getting the chickens and with these goats we'll be getting them before having shelter for them. I guess if there's anymore nasty weather before we can get their housing built we can put them in the laundry shed, LOL.

 

[StormyMoon]

Quote:
I have a very sensitive nose, so I give it the sniff test if it smells bad it goes to the compost pile.
It varies depending on how much time they have to spend in the shelter during the winter I changed it often every few days to 1 time a week.
Depends on how much mud they bring in too cause wet hay can grow mold and it causes breathing issues , that goes with any place though if there is a lot of rain.

During the summer I change it out less. People say bucks make bad smells but I have only 1 buck he is 1 year old I haven't smelt the bad odor people talk about yet. But boy my chickens stink the barn up and I have to clean it every 2 days.

Editing to say: The pallet is a pallet crate it came with the top frame connected to the bottom it is 8 ft long 4 ft wide and 3 ft tall
Originally it looked like this.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/56092_066.jpg

I guess the sniff test is pretty popular when it comes to such things, lol.

So where'd you get that pallet crate?

That would be nice, make building a little easier, haha. I am glad though that we have the pallet we have. We do have a couple others but one is larger than the other and there's no way, right now, I'm gonna take them apart, lol.... This will be a fun project, we built our coop and I enjoyed that. It's a tad bit stressful this time though b/c we were prepared and had the coop already built BEFORE getting the chickens and with these goats we'll be getting them before having shelter for them. I guess if there's anymore nasty weather before we can get their housing built we can put them in the laundry shed, LOL.

My husband gets them at his job, they just throw them out when they are done with them.

I told him I could build all sorts of things with them so he started bringing them home.

You can also use Barrels for shelters for goats the big blue barrels, or old dog houses, around here I have seen people us some sort of 1/2 circle type deal covered in tarp. They don't even bother building a barn most the time out here, unless its for horses or cows.

The only thing about tarps is you have to keep replacing them but for a temporary place out of the rain or sun is good.
My luck the wind would rip it off we have gotten up to 60 - 90 mph winds out here I don't know how they keep those tarps from shredding to pieces.

 

[1MrsMagoo]

I have four goats, one Spanish Meat nanny named Hershey, one Mini Nubian named Lightning, one Myatonic/Nigerian mix billy named Aladar, and one Spanish+Myatonic/Nigerian whether named Willie.

I get a lot of used lumber since I work as a carpenter on construction sites so was able to build a nice sized structure for basically the cost of our time and the roof metal (we are still working on finishing the fascia boards and siding). This is our goat and chicken house.

The goats have from the left of the man door and the chickens everything to the right. We got a trailer load of free wood and display boxes from a local World Market that was remodeling. Since my older goats love to get up on the highest spot possible to sleep, we used the boxes and some of the laminated pine boards for the goats beds.

The great part about this is that we built the beds to create a hollow spot which we could tap into from the chicken coop and create these nesting boxes under the beds.

Then we put up a wooden paddock for the goats so they could be locked in at night and not let out in the morning until AFTER I had milked our cow, who shares their pasture.
The paddock with one of our Delaware hens peeking out of the goat house.

Here are Hershey and Willie in their paddock.

 

[4 the Birds]

Our goat house is about 6 ft x 8 ft with another open area about the same size. The open area faces East and away from most of the incoming weather. The closed area has a wood floor and I build a small table out of scrap wood. The goats love to climb on top to sleep. Plenty of hay is inside along with a couple of troughs up a couple of feet for grain or mineral/salt blocks. I also have a heated water bucket inside. The side door has a small opening when the goats were tiny but I now leave the door fully open now that they are BIG (2 Alpine/Nubian goats). This design works VERY WELL. I can put a bale of hay in the 3 sided area and they enjoy sitting in that area when it rains. The enclosed area is nice during storms and during the Winter months. I have windows on each side that I added boards to protect (they still managed to knock out one of the windows so I boarded over) They have full time access to a 1 acre pasture fenced with no climb horse fence. I also built a play ground structure with roof for them to climb on and lounge during the Summer.