Hi Everyone! I've been reading through all the old posts and I couldn't find any threads on floor plans for a little goat barn. The picture is an historic goat barn somewhere! I am doing this from the ground up and can do a post and beam with a real board and batten wall. I plan on up to about 5 or 6 nigerians and then in a year or two I'd like to add 2 or 3 Saanens (I'd also like to winter my chickens in this barn, say about 12 or 18 layers)...the ducks can stay in a small adjacent duck hut that they already winter over in (just at night!)... So, long story short Im looking fro some ideas for a logical floorplan. Size and quantitiy of pens, number of milking stands (one seems fine to me for a total of 10 goats or so)...you all know the questions I should think about...Thanks in advance. If we've got posts here already you can point me to them. In February a fellow goat person 2 hours from here is going to give me her 2 four year old girls (registered)and a 3 month old female kid (of one of the 4 year olds, no papers but father is a ND) for $400 and include the fencing and posts she has as well as all extra food, buckets, bells, and collars...no testing has been done...I plan to test them once they are here. I plan to temporarily house them in a neighbor's barn where she keeps sheep until about April when my barn should be done. I have a max footprint of about 20 x 16. I was thinking a saltbox like roofline to keep the ceiling low over the pens for winter warmth. Thanks again for any ideas!
David
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Adrienne said:
Thank You!! I'll post up some sketches in a week or so... I'd rather move things around on paper!
David
Hi David,
One milk stand for 1o goats? I only have two goats and I already want another milking stand. I suppose if you are the only one doing the work it makes sense, but my David and I are most often out there together. With only one stand, only one goat gets whatever she needs done at a time, and knowing how fast everything else gets done when we work together; having only one milk stand is like watching paint dry. It sounds like you live up north so hopefully someone there would be more suited to answering your barn questions. We want to eventually build a barn where the only truly fixed thing would be the 100 sqft indoor chicken space, in a corner leading out to 3oo sqft fully enclosed, partially covered run, giving us room for a max 25 chickens.
Oh, how exciting! I'm jealous! I have always had to work around existing buildings. We have a horse barn that I've been using for most of my goats for nine years. Last year, we created pens in our second barn for kidding. There are four semi-private kidding pens, meaning that each one holds one doe, but they can all see each other because they're herd animals and don't like to be alone. But no one can bother them much. Every now and then they'll try to butt heads through the hog panels, but that doesn't happen much with does. Two kidding pens are 5 X 10, and two are 4 X 10. There are two nursery pens where does are moved after kidding. I keep them in the kidding pens as long as possible. A week or two is ideal, so that the kids are really on their feet and attached to mom. If they do try to nurse off another goat, they can handle it better when she smacks them. The nursery pens are 8 X 10 and 10 X 10, and they have little goat doors that go out into the pasture. The 8 X 10 pen opens on the west side of the barn, and the 10 X 10 opens to the north side, so they go into different pastures. I think this is about what you would need for the goats you're proposing. The Saanens would need a 10 X 10 for daily living. If you have five or six Nigerians in a 10 X 10, you'll need to muck it out at least once a week in the summer, because the ammonia would get high pretty fast. If you get up to ten NDs in that space, you'd need to muck it out about every three days, assuming they spend their days outside. You could get by with two kidding pens if you spread out the kidding times.
Here are some pictures from my kidding barn pens:
http://antiquityoaks.blogspot.com/2010/04/update-on-new-kidding-pen...
We are still working with one milkstand, and we were milking 14 last year. For a couple years, we milked out in the open barn, but we have a 5 X 10 milking parlor now.
Definitely create a solid wall between the birds and the goats. Chickens and ducks with goats will drive you crazy. At least, they drive me crazy. I've found chickens roosting above the hay feeder (which means they poop on the hay) and ducks roosting on the side of the water trough (which means they poop in it). And I don't know how it happened, but one day, a goat had chicken poop on her back. :(