I can't take credit for this since I saw it on the internet but thought I would share for any goat owners that want to make feeding an easier daily task. What we like to do is give a flake of pure Alfalfa per goat in the mornings then after the grain feeding they get to run free and eat pasture grass. This feeder is also in the middle of their fenced yard (this yard is for the times we have to leave and they can't escape)
The huge bale in the cage is 1,000 pounds of grass, alfalfa mix so moving it can be a challenge. I pounded a T-post through the middle of both sides and used my tractor to drag it into the yard. I then enclosed it with metal Cattle Panels that the goats can fit their heads through to eat and still have minimal amount of waste. it's so nice having this. Their is nothing worse than having to fill feeders in the hurricane force winds impaling your eyes with hay stems. And it minimizes the knuckle head goats from fighting over feeder space.
P.s. The hay is much greener than in the photos. Diana is the master of the camera settings .. I just know how to make it click.
~Ken~
I been wanting to make the ducks a better house out by their pond since they spend all of their day out there. Plus they are just so messy they need their own house. The big dog house that looks like a mini barn we got cheap at a farm auction. The smaller red coop a friend gave to us and I was looking for a way to connect the two. Instead i just made an outside enclosure which gives them the option of sleeping "outside" without being in danger from the coyotes. We used pallets and free wood that we have been collecting. I'm pretty happy with the outcome. The only thing left to do is to make a hatch door on the back of the brown dog house for easier cleaning. The ducks love it and now I hope we won't have to lead the ducks home at night.
P.s. That is an old satellite dish that we used for a pond. It makes it easy to use a push broom and sweep it for clean water everyday. It's a lil dirty in the photos since it was close to the evening.
~Ken~
We have read a lot about using the deep litter method on various websites. We decided to give it a try and it does work. The concept being to spread dry hay over the messy hay in the barn creating layers that also keep the animals warm since the composting of it underneath generates heat. Occasionally we spread some horse stall freshener as well. It worked great all winter long. It never smelled and we never had to worry about heating the goats on those crazy cold days. However we never seen anyone say how hard it is to muck it all out in the spring.
It was the most awful experience and partly due to us not thinking to make the barn accessible with a trailer at a big door. I spent a 12 hour day just chipping away at the layers of nastiness and wheel burrowing it out to the gate. It didn't smell until I started digging into it and it was the most god awful smell ever. Armed with a painters mask which felt pointless since nothing was going to keep that smell out. A pitch fork was all I could use to break it up and it had the shortest handle creating knots all up and down my back. I then spent the next two days shoveling it all again onto my trailer then taking it out to the end of our land only to shovel it a third time. This whole process about destroyed my back and broke my will :p Before I started, the hay level on the floor was so high that my head was in the rafters. Now, so much came out I can barely touch the rafters with my finger tips.
If you decide to do the deep litter method it really does help to have a tractor that can scoop the stuff up and a barn that you can maneuver a trailer into an easy position. Lesson learned. Our new barn in the works has two swing out doors.
Another farm blunder and lesson learned is the hay you can see in the photos. Each of those bales weigh 1,000 pounds or more. It's the cheapest way you can buy hay this year and this stuff is all organic (not sprayed with chemicals) Our goat mentor got a load delivered and she had these three on her trailer ready for us to pick up. She has a tractor with a hay fork to move the giant bales. The first load o fun was when I hooked my Dodge Durango up to the trailer. I thought in my little brain that since I had the big V-8 my Durango should do just fine. Well.... I lowered the trailer down on my hitch and that weight just about lifted the front tires of my Dodge off the ground. Thankfully Mary Sue was kind enough to then let us also use her Ford diesel truck to get it home.
Onto the next newbie blunder. I don't think Mary Sue has tried to man handle these things. She said we should be able to roll these off the trailer. I know I'm not that out of shape, but these things don't budge. Diana and I were on top of them pushing with our legs only to get sand spurs stuck in our bums. Here comes our old 1946 tractor to the rescue. We pounded fence T-posts through each side and then hooked a chain to them which made it possible to drag them off the trailer and onto pallets.
I then went on to get my steel wheel tractor stuck while using it as a rototiller. Something I thought I could never do with this beast of a machine. As the wheels dug down the towing draw bar lifted the tractor up. I could spin those metal wheels like wheel of fortune. Out comes the chains again and the Dodge to pull it out.
Farming rocks. I swear. Who needs a gym? What a week :p
~Ken~
Our neighbor was nice enough to give us an old camper he didn’t want for free. I tried to talk him down more but he wouldn’t budge on the price. We’ve had it sitting in our field for the longest time thinking of using it for baby goats but since we have so many more new bird kids, it was time to move it and make a coop out of it. I first gutted most of the stuff out of it. The best part of this coop is most of the work was already done. It had doors, windows, cabinet nest boxes etc… and it didn’t take the work of building something from scratch.
I’m not sure about the outside cosmetics just yet. The wood you see on the outside was just some cheap auction wood we had lying un-used and I threw it up against the side. We had to level the camper out on pallets and 4x4’s to keep it from moving. It’s not the prettiest coop but it’s recycling at its best. It should house 20 plus birds since they only get locked up at night. The roosts worked out perfect ending up right in front of the windows and nest boxes. I took the stove out so they don’t have worries and nightmares about a stove.
Eventually the sink will lose the wood shavings and be a waterer I think. I couldn’t do it now since the rubber on the drain plug won’t hold water but eventually I think it will be a nice and easy way to drain and fill their water. We also use the sand out of our yard for the floor since it’s free and we can use a cat litter scoop to clean it. We save the wood shavings for the nest boxes.
These kids are going to be living in style thanks to our neighbor. Were just going to have to go old school and save the tent for that day when we can make it back into the mountains we all miss so much. It’s a sacrifice I made for our chicks. It’s not a chick magnet camper but I tried to hide it at the back of everything. I know I’m going to hear it that first day of camping when we wake up with sore backs out of a tent :p
The pictures are from beginning to end. I still have to put some hardware cloth over some windows that didn't have screens, paint the roosts and maybe dress up the outside somehow. Haven't thought that one through just yet.
~Ken~
Here we go again. Were a little low on room for all those babies coming so were making our next, bigger barn. I'm no house building guru but the other two didn't blow down yet ; ) Were planning to make this one with separate stalls. One of our customers has been selling us these great shipping crate panels that work for everything. Between that and deals we landed at farm auctions, the only things we've had to buy new are screws and hinges keeping the cost down. It's a little rough trying to dig poles down into the frozen ground this time of year having to use a pick to get through that layer of frost. The whole area to the left of the metal gate is soon to be an entirely fenced in garden area for the summer. (all free fence panels off craigs list) The electric fence has to be re-routed out to the pasture and the list of work to be done keeps growing. We will post more pictures as it all progresses. It's sure going to be nice to have the extra room. This one is going to have some nice sun roofs we ran across as well. Our first barn didn't have any. After building the small addition off the back of it with one, I definitely see the benefits of that extra light.
After the frustration of trying to groom them chained to a fence, we decided a nice outdoor stand would be nice for grooming and milking on the nice days. The girls hopped on up with no trouble at all. I did a few modifications later like raising that blue bucket higher to hold their food bowl. Now all it needs is some paint on that white wood. The top has a sheet of linoleum for easy clean up. We made it out of an old table that a friend gave to us and we use a wood stump for a chair. Each side rail is removable also for easy access to shave their bellies.
I had to edit and say a big thank you to Terry from Triple T Excavating. He has been very knowledgeable, fast, on time and professional. Hopefully no one runs into this mess but he's the man for the job ; ) Even the county has been fast at their approval and inspection however I think over $500 for a permit is criminal.
It couldn't happen at a worse time of year. We were always suspicious of the septic system when we moved in. Our tip off was a noticeable ditch running from the tank so we had the tank pumped and inspected and it all checked out good. However the part we couldn't see was the fact that someone replaced the plastic septic tank with a concrete one (which is a good thing) never pulling a permit. Apparently whomever did the new tank only ran one short pipe out for a drain field and it worked until now. We had water coming up from underground. Right then I knew we were in for an expensive ride. It was supposed to cost $3,000 to fix until our excavator found no pipes to fix and now were over $5,000.... the same amount are car warranty ripped us off for a few months back. It's gonna take a lot of goat milking to make up for this mess.
Everything you see we found on craigs list and farm auctions over time. We needed to keep the costs down and we managed to find so many good deals. I will run you through the outside of the building process and then the inside of the coop. I hope this helps anyone looking to start their own flock. We didn't really know what we were doing in the beginning and have learned some tips we hope to pass along. We used a shed and the only problem with a coop this big is you need to have alot of birds for the winter so they can huddle together and generate body heat. We run two heat lamps off of a heavy gauge extension cord to keep it warm but we had temperatures that hit -40 wind chill and in a panic we through an oil filled radiant heater into a trash can and put chicken wire over it. It worked great! But it is also 1500 watts so it does run the electric bill up. A good unit to have that you can put inside the coop is a thermo cube. It keeps the heat lamps from turning on until the temperatures drop below 35 degrees which will save you money on electric. We also now have a thermometer inside the coop that has a unit inside our house that can tell us remotely what the temperature is inside the coop. It's very handy if your wanting to monitor the temps without going outside ; ) If you use heat lamps, I would recommend using the red bulbs. It seems to keep the chickens calmer the darker it is in the coop and have it strapped up in different places tightly to make sure it can't be knocked down and start a fire. We also went ahead and wrapped around the metal cage with chicken wire since we have seen our birds fly into it a number of times. Click the pictures below for more ; )
We're getting ready to bring home two new baby goats within the next couple of weeks and we've been finding a use for all the free stuff we been finding on craigslist that's been piling up in the yard -- I knew it would all come in handy. The pile is getting smaller now. We're not master craftsman by any means but we've been winging it pretty good I think with only two days work into it for now. The walls are some tough shipping crates that we braced with some 4x4 posts and we also used a telephone pole dug deep at all four corners. The trusses we were lucky to find someone giving them away for free out of an old mobile home. The OSB roof was the only thing that cost us the most out of the project. Even all the wood fencing that will eventually enclose a garden area was scrapped and left out on the corner for free. It sure is nice to be able to come across such good finds. I don't know how we all did it before the internet. Still have some work to get it all finished but I thought we would share the project in progress.
~Ken~
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