Plans for Goats this Winter/Spring

[thankful_k]

So I have 4 Spanish-Boer female goats (pictured). I want to either borrow (or more realistically buy, then sell off) a buck to get them pregnant, and get kids in March. This is my first year with goats.

I am walling off a bay (approx 16x16) in the barn to put kidding pens. However, since I have a dirt floor, I wanted to elevate the pens. My solution (as of now) is to make them with pallet-like bottoms, 1/2in plywood floor with rubber mats on top, dimensions are 3.5 ft wide x 4 ft deep with three plywood walls (2 sides and back) at 3.5 ft high. This way I can move them around individually if need be, and get them through the 4ft door of the compartment on a hand truck without disassembling them. I can have 5 or six pens in my space. That's great ... but the pens will be a bit small.

The other option is to build the more recommended 5x6 pens over a semi-permanent platform floor, underneath which will soon be opened the North Texas Rat & Snake Country Club, and a really great place for the (goat) kids to crawl under and get stuck But then again that may also happen with the other type of pens. This way, I'll only be able to fit *MAYBE* 4 pens in the whole place, more likely only three.

Thoughts?

 

[Patchouli]

Do you know others who have goats? Is that what they have done? Used pallets? Why can’t you leave the dirt “floor” as is and top it with hay? I’d be concerned that the goats would want to rearrange things and they would move the rubber mats elsewhere.
If it were me, I’d visit other people that have goats and see what setup works for them. The Storey book on raising goats is a good resource. Internet search for goat raising books turns up a few good resources for online purchase. “The Storey Guide to Raising Meat Goats”, etc., is one you’d find in a library. If you have a library nearby check there for books on raising goats. You did say this would be a first time for you, right? No, I don’t have goats but I have friends and acquaintances with goats. Some have dirt floor, some concrete.
The more people you talk to about it, the better.

 

[Emmy-Lou]

We have boer goats but we are in Australia so our climate may be quite different. We are building up our herd numbers and currently have 15 and a couple more does ready to kid. We are in the subtropics so its generally quite warm, though we are in the mountains and we do get hard frosts overnight in winter.

We just have our goats in the paddock with electric netting which we move weekly, ensuring they get a combination of pasture and woody weeds. In that, we have a goat-specific lick block and a water trough that gets moved with them. We also feed them 1 teaspoon each of copper sulphate as extra protection against worms in a bit of pelleted goat food weekly. If you are after an excellent goat book check out Natural goat care by Pat Coleby.

We have a movable shelter or we tie up a heavy tarp to protect them from the rain, goats don't like rain. They handle our frosty nights just fine out in the paddock. They find shelter under bushes and snuggle up together. Their coats thicken up nicely in winter. Our goats kid in spring/summer and they generally kid out in the paddock. If the weather is looking particularly cold or poor we will move a goat that looks ready to kid into a pen in the shed, but after a day or two they are returned to the herd, baby goats are pretty tough. We are about to build a specific small goat yard near the house yard with a shed for when we do need to isolate them, that way it will be easy to supervise them rather than traipsing across the paddock. Their shelter will be a semi-enclosed shed with hay on the floor, but generally, they stay in the paddock, it's rare we need to pen one up.

It's not uncommon for boer goats to be used in Australia as a form of natural weed control and used to help mitigate bushfire risk in forest areas using a set-up like ours. They are great animals. Deadly snakes are incredibly common in Australia, and we have never had an issue. The snakes tend to clear off when the goats trample about.

As far as a buck goes, Generally in livestock circles it's genetically acceptable for that he can be bread with his daughters, but not his granddaughters or you risk narrowing the genetics too much and getting problems.

 

[Hooch]

Pallets are great hidy holes for mice rats n snakes..something to consider. That idea sounds like alot of work to only utilize for a short while n will be in the way. I just cant see that idea being a good solution really..but it's not my set up.
I would separate my doe and kids from everyone for about a week or so in a stall I had set up. I just used straw as bedding on a gravel dirt floor..easy to clean up. Then the doe n kids rejoined the herd including the horse I had or I'd put her n the kids in the pasture set up just for them.
I had my own buck so I had to manage keeping him separate at times..as I only wanted kids in spring. So I kept two of his boys that I banded as companions for the buck and weedwackers.
Some folks would rent a buck for their females. It's a good alternative to having to keep one and separated. I had the room and energy at the time to manage it all at the time.
I still have my doe, whom I retired and one of her kids who was one of the banded boys. They are now my field weed wackers. I'm pretty done with raising livestock at the moment. Its alot of time energy and money I'd rather put into other projects.
I did enjoy watching the kids bounce around..they are fun to watch. I sold most of my goats but I've put a few in the freezer for me and my dog. Home grown dog food was the best.

 

[viking]

We raised goats for a while after we first moved to our property, loved them, they were good companions and did an amazing job as living weed hackers, they cleaned the upper half of our property almost down to nothing. Our favorite buck lost his voice one winter and the next year got his front hooves stuck in branches of a tree and died, he couldn't call out for help, at that point my wife no longer wanted to have goats, I was bummed out as well. The thing we learned from raising goats was that after they have eaten all the available weeds and other plants, they need something like alfalfa hay for good nourishment, that hay was expensive and I wasn't working at that time. I felt bad not being able to feed them properly, just goes to show that we need to plan things out better before jumping into having livestock, you can easily bite off more than you can chew and it's not good to have animals suffer because of that.