Okay, so I HAVE decided I'll be getting a buckling. He'll be coming home in a couple of weeks & I have ideas in my head in how to house him, but am having second thoughts! I drew a mapped outline in paint in the area that I'd like him to be in. First, I was thinking of housing him in goat pen #1 because the doe that is in there anyhow, I'd like him to breed to. So whenever he can get the deed done is okay by me. But, I'm leary because they are outside 24/7 & I don't want anything getting to him since he'll be only 2 months old. I also don't want him escaping in the middle of the night. Then, I was thinking of putting the doe & her doeling in goat pen #1 all together. But again, the doeling is tiny & I don't want anything happening to her! Then, if I did do that, the wether & the buckling would be houses in goat pen #2. I could always build another pen, but I don't need a million goat pens.. or do I? I'm confused. Argh. Any opinions?
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Here is an excerpt on rotational grazing from my book:
http://www.homegrownandhandmadethebook.com/2014/06/smart-rotational...
You do actually need multiple goat pens so that you can rotate them between pens. There are already some discussions on here about rotational grazing, and there is a lot about it in my book (Raising Goats Naturally). If you keep them in one single pen all the time, they will eat down the grass. If the pen is small, they will kill the grass. If the pen is large enough that they don't kill the grass, they will graze the grass unevenly so some areas will have really tall areas and other will have really short grass, and the short grass will have larvae on it from internal parasites (from the goat poop), and then you will have parasite problems with the goats. That is the super short version on the importance of having multiple pens. There are many ways to accomplish this.
I'm sorry if it was confusing, but goat pen #2 (or I guess idea #2) would be the buckling + wether together in one pen, & then all the girls together in another pen. Thankfully, the 2 pens I have now do not share a fence line. I think I still might need to make the bucklings pen a little bigger. Oy, what did I get myself into! :)
At two months old, it may be a while before he can shoot "real" bullets, if you catch my drift... I personally don't like pen breeding, because due dates are a hard enough guessing game when you DO know the date a breeding took place. So my vote for option #1 would be NO. Same with option two. I wouldn't take the risk of a breeding with a doeling that isn't up to weight before she's ready. I would house the buckling with a wether or another buck, and keep my girls separate. I have a shared fence line, and just adding some smaller fencing wasn't enough. I have cattle panels, chicken wire along the bottom half of that, and then in ADDITION to that, electric fencing on the buck's side to keep them from breeding through the wire. (which they DID, and I learned the hard way.) So to clarify, my advice would be two pens. One for boys, one for girls. LOTS of fencing between the two, or no shared fence lines.