My goats' "home" is a pen about 15' x 15' with a shelter along one side that they use mostly when it's raining. It doesn't get very cold here in Southern Arizona and they seem to prefer being out in the main area even to sleep.
The breeder I bought them from kept her goats' outdoor pen areas swept bare except for a very light scattering of waste hay (there's no grass here unless it's cultivated)--which looked really nice and neat and was an idea I liked until I realized that every urine stream that hits our hard clay makes a puddle and then a mud slick, and that they will lie down in those puddles and in the goat pebbles. So, I've switched to couple of inches of wood chips on the bottom, and then I let the waste hay pile up on that. The urine is absorbed immediately and the goat pebbles sink to the bottom really quickly, and with a daily spraying of Pen Protect there's no odor, and it can go an astonishingly long time without needing to be changed...but I'm not quite sure which way is really more healthy for the goats. Any input?
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Sounds much more goat friendly your way... and a lot like a sort of a deep litter method... which would make the bottom layers of your bedding perfection for your garden! :)
My area is much larger, but I don't have "bedding" over all the areas... because it's so large. My does all choose to lay on waste hay rather than straight dirt most of the time.
Okay, thanks. Obviously, she has more experience than I do, so I wanted to make sure that my "common sense" choice wasn't a big mistake. Whew!
Bedding is definitely better if you don't have grass -- for all the reasons you listed. I can't imagine NOT using bedding. That sounds very unclean, especially with compacted soil or clay. I can't imagine milking goats in that situation. Even if you're not milking, I'd think you could wind up mastitis because you'd have goats' udders and teats getting dirty when they're lying down in poop and pee.