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Hi everybody i have been following this thread figured id drop in and say hi. I am from indiana i live in town on maybe half an acre. I have 6 chickens right now all of them are heritage plymouth rock. We have a garden, walnut trees, apple, cherry, peach, and mulberry trees, and black and red raspberries, and strawberries. I save seed almost have all of them i need so i dont have to buy anymore. And i am currently working on a new shed for my girls with an area for a pair of nigerian dwarf goats. I have been looking hard for the ones i want in feb/march when the kidding starts. Cant wait to make my own cheese.


Hi :) I'm hoping for Nigerians when I get them. It would be my next thing, but I do live in an hoa that says you can't have them. It also says we can't have chickens and I'm not the only one with those lol! The neighbors won't mind, but I figure I should put a privacy fence up first so it isn't so obvious during our once a year checks. That will cost a lot of $$$ so it's going to be further down the road.
 
Oh my gosh.. so cute! How many are you planning on getting in the future? My family had goats my whole life except for the last few years and I miss them so much! Especially the kids! We raised nubians and toggenburgs. My great uncle had a pretty amazing dairy set up. He would usually have 12-15 milkers at a time. Lots of mom's would buy the milk for babies that were having difficulty digesting formula. A couple local doctors would refer them. I can't wait to get goats again in the next few years. Our barn had 5 or so trees fall on in a couple years ago during two big storms and really damaged the roof over the milking room.. so we fixed that.. then a tree fell on the other half of the barn and totally broke through the roof. That isn't fixed yet... so once we get everything fixed I can finally get my goats!


We are planning out on starting fairly small to see how well we like having them :) We are getting thirty chickens this spring (which is how I found this website to start with lol) we are also getting meats rabbits but only one buck and two does to start ..... My husband wants a pig or two but that gets pushed further back since we are now on the goat fast track haha! Maybe a small dairy cow at a later date like a jernsey (is that even how you spell that?!?!) to be fenced in with our goats. I know you have to keep your pigs penned alone because those suckers will even eat you if they are in the right mood but everything else we will let be fairly friendly. I know you shouldn't let them share feed. So the chickens will have their own housing but since they will be free range there will be mixing going on! We are planning on putting the pigs the farthest from the house and garden for the simple fact I don't want my kids to be able to get to the pig pen without me knowing. Bucks second farthest with chickens goat does, kids and rabbits closer to the house. If the kids want to pet the chickens rabbits or goats fine. Bucks and pigs ummm nope let's get the petting out of your system before we get there kind of deal. How far are you guys set ups with your chickens and goats from your houses? We have our chicken coop about built but are still discussing a spot. Someone (some idiot I say) told hubby that if your chickens are close to your house that you will have chicken mites in your house. He wants the coop no closer than 300 ft from house! I say I have to feed and take care of these animals plus the kids I am not a bird nor do we have birds in the house so nope more like 100 ft. What do you guys think?
 
I dont have much property to work with in town so my new pen runs the length of my house on one side. The other three sides are privacy fenced. The are as probably 25x60. Never measured it. My coop is 12x10 and it is inside the fence so its pretty close to the house here!
 
Aww, she is so cute! I would like goats eventually... Probably way down the line. I do have a drip system in place. I like the newspaper idea, but we have crazy high winds so unless I staked it I would be lucky if it lasted a day.

Are the goats for milk, fun, or meat?
you might try using that mesh as a fence border to break the winds so the soil dose not dry out faster.
 
Or grow natural native plants for a windbreak? That might save you some money plus maybe you could find some plant for your windbreak to supply you a food source that you don't have to water? Literally when I picture the desert I see cactus, sand and tumbleweed a like in those old westerns my father in law is obsessed with! Surely there is a natural people food there though!
 
Ok newbie I looked online for native desert food sources and found four things ..... Desert ironwood, mesquite, palo verde, and prickly pear. Not 100% on any of them or your zone but would any of these work as a windbreak/food source?
 
See one idea leads to the next. I'm unfortunate/fortunate however you want to look at to sit in front of my computer at work. We are extremely slow so it gets boring and don't want to find tasks to do. They are building another location to move to so all effort is on that project. No new inventory to sell or promote our current location. Which is somewhat a pain since part of my pay is commission. But grateful I still have a job and they don't want me to leave so I just surf the net.
 
We are planning out on starting fairly small to see how well we like having them
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We are getting thirty chickens this spring (which is how I found this website to start with lol) we are also getting meats rabbits but only one buck and two does to start ..... My husband wants a pig or two but that gets pushed further back since we are now on the goat fast track haha! Maybe a small dairy cow at a later date like a jernsey (is that even how you spell that?!?!) to be fenced in with our goats. I know you have to keep your pigs penned alone because those suckers will even eat you if they are in the right mood but everything else we will let be fairly friendly. I know you shouldn't let them share feed. So the chickens will have their own housing but since they will be free range there will be mixing going on! We are planning on putting the pigs the farthest from the house and garden for the simple fact I don't want my kids to be able to get to the pig pen without me knowing. Bucks second farthest with chickens goat does, kids and rabbits closer to the house. If the kids want to pet the chickens rabbits or goats fine. Bucks and pigs ummm nope let's get the petting out of your system before we get there kind of deal. How far are you guys set ups with your chickens and goats from your houses? We have our chicken coop about built but are still discussing a spot. Someone (some idiot I say) told hubby that if your chickens are close to your house that you will have chicken mites in your house. He wants the coop no closer than 300 ft from house! I say I have to feed and take care of these animals plus the kids I am not a bird nor do we have birds in the house so nope more like 100 ft. What do you guys think?

I'm absolutely horrible with numbers & distances but if I had to guess our coops are maybe 150 feet from the house and the barn is maybe 200 feet, with a bunch of different animal enclosures branching off behind it. We had a large goat yard for the milkers, three different buck runs, and a few kid areas with calf houses in them. It does not need to be 300ft away! Your chickens shouldn't have mites anyway, and if they did, the mites would be on or in the coop, they wouldn't want to be in your house because there is no food source for them there. You can see the distance (kinda) in the below photo. The barn is off to the right, a bit further out from the house. There are three coops all next to each other (two chicken, one duck) although we are using only one right now. Everything over here is in transition, big time! We had so much damage from the storms a few years ago that we're still recovering. Our neighbors have their 5 cows very close to their house, pretty much right behind their deck.

 
I have wanted goats for a long time, but I'm holding off. I'm afraid that if I get them and don't like the milk that it would be a waste. But I don't know anyone who has goats so I can't try any.

Isn't that silly?

I also don't really know much about goats. Guess when I get serious I'll start researching.
 

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