Small Goat Barn Question

[jhendric]

Folks, I've read many of the threads on building a goat house and I still have a question. Many of the you tube videos I've watched have just a dirt floor under a pole barn for goats. Is there any advantage of having concrete or some other raised floor? I am concerned that urine will build up over the years. This will be for Nigerian Dwarf goats. Any other advice or lessons you have learned will be appreciated too. These goats will be for, well, basically pets and for clearing up invasive ground vegetation.

My shed will be 8x16 7' high pole barn with half being open and covered and half being enclosed.

 

[senecak19]

Sorry, I don’t have any feedback for you. Subscribing to this. Something I pondered at one point in time to control some poison ivy. Curious how much maintenance the little guys are. Growing up we had everything but goats.

 

[beowulf]

We use a shed for our goats that was previously used for something else. It has a concrete floor. I personally think it is useful, but you still need to muck it out regularly. A good 'grain' scoop works well. We use TSCo shavings as bedding, and you can also first put down Stall Dry, an absorbent and deodorizer. A little of that goes a long way. In another goat house with a wooden floor (a very small one where we keep new goats) I put down old sheets of plywood over the wood flooring to protect it a bit.

 

[jhendric]

Understood about the regular mucking. I'm curious about the wood floor. Did it rot out quickly?

 

[Big Barn]

Just how small are your goats ?

 

[jhendric]

Well, they are still in their mother's womb at this point. They should stand no taller than 20" and we intend to have 3.

 

[beowulf]

Understood about the regular mucking. I'm curious about the wood floor. Did it rot out quickly?

No, it really never had a chance to do that as I put in a sheet of plywood and then shavings. But, it clearly would have rotted out at some point if I had just left it alone. So wood flooring not a good idea unless you have another wood layer you can lay in there to protect the floor. I have once thought about those horse stall rubber mats they sell at TSCo but have not tried it yet.

 

[Smokeydog]

We used manufactured sand, limestone, on top of dirt in the miking barn. Kept the bedding dry. Some was lost from cleaning and replaced 5-10 years. Helped with odor and foot problems. Another barn had a sloped rough concrete. Self cleaning out the back. Rough concrete helped keep the hoofs trim. Goat hoof maintenance is not a pleasant task and they don’t like it either. Handy to grab buckets of compost for planting. Liked that arrangement better. Raised dairy and meat goats.

Goats like to climb. Love rocks and boulders. Built them a tree house. Big crooked tree trunk with steps notched for steps. Hardwood solid top pallets for floors. They would play and felt safe up in the tree house.

 

[weldingisfun]

Folks, I've read many of the threads on building a goat house and I still have a question. Many of the you tube videos I've watched have just a dirt floor under a pole barn for goats. Is there any advantage of having concrete or some other raised floor? I am concerned that urine will build up over the years. This will be for Nigerian Dwarf goats. Any other advice or lessons you have learned will be appreciated too. These goats will be for, well, basically pets and for clearing up invasive ground vegetation.

My shed will be 8x16 7' high pole barn with half being open and covered and half being enclosed.

The dirt floor will be fine for them. Living in NC as you do, you probably don't have extreme cold weather so bedding won't be necessary. If your Nigerians are like my Boers, they will sleep outside 90% of the time. The shelter will be used during rain or during heavy winds. It would be advisable to put a bench inside the shed so they can get up off the ground too. This is a link to our website about the subject. Shelter It may or may not be helpful. You are doing the right thing to ask questions before putting animals on the ground. We have been raising goats for over twenty years and still learn something new every day.

 

[EddieWalker]

Folks, I've read many of the threads on building a goat house and I still have a question. Many of the you tube videos I've watched have just a dirt floor under a pole barn for goats. Is there any advantage of having concrete or some other raised floor? I am concerned that urine will build up over the years. This will be for Nigerian Dwarf goats. Any other advice or lessons you have learned will be appreciated too. These goats will be for, well, basically pets and for clearing up invasive ground vegetation.

My shed will be 8x16 7' high pole barn with half being open and covered and half being enclosed.

I'm fairly new to goats, and I still have a lot to learn. I currently have 9 female and one male. Originally they where in one of my two horse stalls. The horses all prefer the other stall, and the goats had that other stall all to themselves. But for whatever reason, the goats started staying on the same side as the horses. I think it was to steel their food, but who knows what a goat is thinking? Eventually we turned that stall into another chicken coop.

My current plan is to build a goat barn off of the horse barn. It will be 36x36 with a dirt floor and walls on all four sides. I will have large doors on two sides so I can control the horses from going in there and steeling all the goats food. It will have stalls so I can separate them when they have babies. I already have a small shelter for my pig that passed away last year, and that will become a separate area for my male goat when I want to keep him away from the others. The main thing for me will be a way to feed all of them in one covered area, and to be able to deal with babies. Feeding in the cold, and dealing with mud and thunder storms has gotten old really fast!!!

For your needs, I would start out with a loafing shed type building with three solid walls and a roof. If it gets really cold there, I might enclose half of the front wall too.

I have not noticed any urine build up. I haven't noticed any goat urine at all. I don't know if the pee inside the horse stall or not, it's just not an issue. When we have had babies, we put out a thick layer of hay for them. Otherwise, dirt is natural for them to sleep on.

Where will you store your feed for them? How you you feed them? They are crazy at feed time. The tend to run from feeder to feeder, constantly steeling from each other. I have five feeders for 10 goats, and that's worked out well. Before, I just spread it on the ground for the, but I like putting it in the feeders better. They also need fresh, clean water. Last week when we froze all week, I had to carry water to them in a five gallon bucket. That was for the horses and chickens too. I need a better way to deal with freezing temps and water. When it's cold out, that's the wrong time to fix it, and when it's nice out, I get caught up in doing other things. It's my own fault, I just need to get a water line that wont freeze in winter!!!

I have a feed room that is 12x12 that is sealed up well enough that I've never found a mouse dropping inside that room, even though I have lots of mice out in the chicken coops steeling their food. I buy feed once a week and it's important to have a dry place to store it and also to be able to scoop it out of the sack and feed the animals.

 

[CobyRupert]

Eddie, what’s your current water line setup to the barn?

Up here in the frozen north (well not today), I’ve seen people deal with an above ground water line by putting a tee in the line at the warm spot source (basement) and installing an air hose connection to it.
When done running water they used air compressor to blow out the line.
They got really fancy and put 2 solenoid valves (1 in water source, 1 in air source) in the basement before the tee and controlled them from a 3 position switch in the barn.
Here, we just disconnect and (slowly) drain a garden hose each time. Draining it quick will leave water in it that will freeze.

 

[jhendric]

Thank you for all the great feedback! I am planning to put the feed in sealed metal trash cans and store them in the same small barn. My design includes what amounts to a hay loft that can store hay and feed cans 7' above the ground.

 

[EddieWalker]

We tried metal cans for feed and realized that the feed at the bottom never got used, and over time, it would start to rot. If you go with the metal cans, be sure to empty it completely before filling it again.

When I build my Goat Barn addition to my current barn, I am going to figure out a way to dump the sacks of feed into a silo type thing that I can fill a coffee can up by opening a handle and the feed comes out the bottom. I've seen a few for sale that might work, but I wont get into buying or making it until I'm ready for it.

My water line is half inch PEX that's about 2 feet in the ground. It's fine. My issue is that when I built the barn, I wasn't sure where to put the spicket. We decided to put it on the side of the barn kind of central to where the animals are all around it. This was a bad idea. Since building the barn, we've fenced off feeding areas to keep horses and goats apart from each other, and also allow the chickens to have their area so the horses and goats don't eat their food. Everyone steals from everyone else.

Being that I have this plan to add on, I haven't fixed the water issue. Instead, we have a hose that goes to the horse water trough, and a hose that goes to the back chicken coop. Both freeze solid. Both hoses are on a three way split from the single spicket. That freezes too. The PEX in the wall is sealed in closed cell foam, so it's probably fine, but where it comes through the wall, it freezes solid.

I need to have a spicket inside the feed room, and when I add on, there will be frost free spickets at each area of the barn for the different types of animals. I'm also thinking that I need a way to have a generator in the barn just to keep the heaters doing for their water when we lose power. It will probably just be a shelf to put it so the exhaust goes outside, it it's inside from the elements, and all the wiring is in place to just start the generator, plug it in, and know that their drinking water will not freeze solid.

When we had that big freeze two weeks ago, I was carrying water out to the barn in a bucket and breaking out the ice that had formed in their water bowls before putting more water in their. I did this twice a day for the chickens. I had one heater in the tank for the horses and goats, which was all the extra power I had from my generator that was also keeping the lights on in my house and our cell phones charged.

It's going to be 77 degrees today, so it's hard to think about water freezing issues right now. But it will be something that I will address before winter hits again next year!!!

 

[cmyoung2]

Might want to rethink your feed storage. With goats, the feed/hay needs to be behind a locked door in a completely enclosed room. As in almost waterproof. Don't think that just a lid, even tied on a trashcan, will keep a goat out, or a door with a normal latch. One trick I used for goats and mice is to get a old chest freezer.Put the trash can in it, use one bag completely before adding more. I stored other stuff in there also, dry, no sun, cheap storage. Just like goats can get out of most fences, they can get into much more than you can imagine.