The goat house and electric fencing

At Blue Oak Ranch, our goats are given plenty of pasture and room.  We use portable electric netting. 

Their house is an 8' by 8' pen, originally built as a portable turkey pen.  This house is built on 2"x6" skids, with eyebolts for towing the house from place to place.  It is bottomless, so when the house is ready to move, it rides up and over the spent beddng, making cleanup easy - scoop with the front loader, and dump on the compost pile. 

The barns will go up this fall - and will give the girls and their kids a lot more space.  They will still be towable for pasture rotation. 

The goat pasture

The goat pasture is rotated every few weeks to every few months, depending on the season and the state of the land. 

I use electric netting as the main fencing for the does. They have access to a large pasture area, with grass and weeds and forbs to nibble. 

The grazing area can be diverse - the section around the pond, the hillside, or crop and garden areas.  The goats can clean up garden residue like spent squash plants or cornstalks.

The permanent pastures consist of orchardgrass, perennial rye, clovers, and birdsfoot trefoil.  I do let herbs and weeds grow, as they also make good forage. 

I feed my goats certified organic alfalfa pellets.  I find the alfalfa pellets much easier to feed than baled hay, because there tends to be so much waste with hay.  There is no waste with the pellets, and I've never seen the goats look better.  They grow well, and have that sleek, well-fed look without excess fat. They also milk very well.  I'm very pleased at how they do on them. 

The feeder from the inside, nearly empty.  It holds 300 lbs of pellets, but could hold more to fill it to the top...but then the goats would snack from the top, not the bottom.

The feeder was originally built to have a roof with an overhang to protect the feeding area, so I could put the feeder outside the house in the summer.  However, I've found it just as convenient to keep it inside the house.

My milking grain is one that I have used for many years with my chickens - show scratch.  It is 4 parts whole oats, 2 parts whole wheat, 1 part cracked corn, 1 part Calf Manna, and 1 part black oil sunflower seed.  The whole grains ensure wholesome soluble fiber, and help increase the butterfat content of the milk.  The black oil sunflower seeds also improve butterfat and make a sleek coat, and the Calf Manna provides protein and minerals.

The buck pens - one buck on each side of the house. 

Bucks are best housed separately from the does.  Although I'd like to range the bucks on pasture, their higher pain tolerance means that they will go right through our electric fences.  Buck stink can taint your milk (I tell people it's like keeping a skunk in your refrigerator), so having the bucks housed separately is a good step toward clean milk.  It also means that you can plan breedings better, and be sure of your does' due dates. 

This is my buck pen.  It consists of a three-sided house, 6' by 8', and a 24' by 20' run, divided into two sections.  Although Apollo and DJ get along fine for the most part, Apollo needed a separate pen when he was growing so he could get his fair share of food.  Now that he's more than twice DJ's size, tables are turned - DJ would never get a bite!  So they remain close neighbors and friends, but not roommates.

They do get fresh browse cut for them a couple times a week - I hang it on the fence, and it provides endless entertainment. 

This photo is a bit outdated - the pens now consist of 5-rail steel pipe horse corral panels.  Having secure fencing is a must for bucks - when they're in rut, they can literally tear down a fence to get to a doe in heat. 

The milking and kid raising barn at the ranch.  One half has the stanchion, storage, and equipment, the other half is the kid pen.  The barn is 10'x8', and is built on 2x6" skids.  It has giant eye-screws, so that I can hook it up to the truck and tow to a new location when necessary. 

The floor is four to six inches of coarse wood chips to keep everything out of the mud when it rains. 

There is a half Dutch door on the kid side, and I'll add the top half later this summer.

The view into the milking side.  There's a canvas tarp that serves as a tent flap style door, to keep out drafts and rain.  The stanchion is on the left, with the grain storage cans in the corner.  Kidding kits fit under the stanchion.   I use a separate stool for my goats because I have both standard and mini goats, and I can move the stool to a comfortable milking position no mater what size goat I'm milking.

The red boxes are my first aid/livestock medical kits, and a shelf holds the everyday milk supplies - udder wipes, teat dip, udder balm, and so forth.  The stanchion folds flat to take to shows.  There is a metal barn desk that opens down to write on, and folds back up out of the way when not in use.  I set my milking pail on the legal-for-trade digital scale hanging on an iron hook, and the milk tote sits on the desk.  I set the milk strainer right over the tote pail, which also holds a frozen water bottle.  I milk each goat, weigh that goat's milk, record it, and pour the milk through the strainer into the tote pail "chill tank."

View up toward the roof, showing the "skylight" panels in the roof.  On both the milking side and the kid pen side, the top third of the wall folds down on hinges to create additional air flow in the hot summer, but can close up on windy or rainy days.  The hanging lamp is a battery-powered electric camping lantern (no electricity at the ranch yet).

The kid pen side, with a wood chip floor covered with straw.  The wood chips keep the ground moisture from soaking up into the straw from below, as well as urine can drain off easily.  The hay rack is a section of cattle panel zip-tied to eye bolts.  The gray feeder box has loose minerals.  The feeder bucket is held onto a short rack with bungee cords at the top and bottom. The bucket can be positioned at different heights as the kids grow.

Kids here are raised on pasteurized milk only for CAE prevention.  For the prices I charge for my animals, people would expect disease-free goats. 

The kid pen with its inhabitants! 

This side can also be used as a kidding pen.  I can keep a close eye on the doe, staying on the milking side (usually wrapped warmly in a down sleeping bag, as the does tend to kid at inconvenient times!). 

Doelings and bucklings need to be separated by 8 weeks of age.  Baby doelings can be fertile and conceive at this age!  I've found that by 5 weeks the boys are busy "experimenting" on each other, so separating earlier is a good idea.