PEOPLE WITH GOATS!!!

[NewGuineaChooks]

I've gotten some pictures of our barn now. We have no trouble with the goats getting out of our fences...except the little wether this spring, he was into everything, and could climb 6 feet straight up a maple tree to jump out of the yard.

We have a small barn. It has space for our lawn-mower, a milk refridgerator, a milking stand, feed storage bins, and two goat pens. Each goat pen has its own little door/opening, opening into a goat yard. We keep milking does in one pen, and 'other' goats (young, not in milk, waiting to be sold) in the other.

Here's the milking does' yard (20 paces x 6 paces); to the far left you can see the chicken's run, and next to that, the top of a white goat's head peeking out the doorway.

Here is the picture of the inside pen that connects to this yard, the door to the yard is on the left, hay rack behind the white goats.

 

[NewGuineaChooks]

And here is a look at the other end of the barn. This pen has tighter fencing to keep little tiny babies from squeezing out. We used second hand chain link for the outside, and lined the inside pen with chicken wire.

Here's a photo from outside, in the yard, looking towards their doorway:

And here is the barn pen that goes with that yard:

Finally, here is another picture of the hay rack. We built the wooden part first, but they kept pulling huge lumps of hay out onto the ground, wasting it, so we added the wire. Above, you can see the hay loft, about 6 ft. up. It fits one truckload of hay at a time.

We take a pitchfork and clean out the barn pens about once a month. The extra hay just piles up on the floor over the days, keeping it relatively clean on top where the goats sleep. The pile of old hay& manure gets tilled into the garden each winter.

 

[ChrystalGail]

Hi Trisha! I got my little Nigerian Dwarf Doe for my birthday this month. She is already bred and is due anytime now. I am going to milk her for the same reasons you are. She is soooo sweet and is great with my kids (human ones!). Anyway, I just have her out in my pasture with my horses. She has her own "mare stall" or open air stall where she can go if she wan't to get away. My DH built her a little house that is about 4'x4' and open at one end. She has been using it a lot lately. Our winters here are very nice, so we don't really need too much protection from the elements. I've heard of how you can make a shelter/barn for them out of used pallets and thought about doing that, but we just used the wood we had lying around.

Here she is... Her name is Molly.

I joke that she is wider than she is tall!

Good luck!