I've had backyard chickens for a few years, just brought home my first pair of ducks today, so the natural next progression is a couple of ND goats, right?
I live a few miles east of Seattle, WA. I would love to have a few acres, but wow is land expensive here. (orig. from MN) A friend taught me how to milk her goats, and I fell in love with them. I tried having dairy sheep in my backyard, because I especially love sheep's cheese. Long story short....there isn't really room to manage full-sized sheep with their lambs in my yard! They had to move. So....now I'm forcing myself to figure out all the management (of poo, mainly) ahead of time before I get my goaties.
I'm interested in deep-bedding methods as I've seen how great they work for sheep. Mud control is a huge problem in my very very wet part of the country as well. I've found a breeder who may be selling me a lovely doe(and hopefully a doeling) after she kids in April, so I have just the right amount of time to get my shelter, fencing, and milking area set up. I look forward to some guidance!
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Welcome. My girls all have both Camanna in their close backgrounds and they will be bred to a Poppy Patch buck. Both farms have excellent goats.
If you visit our members pages (link at the top of this page), you can find members of this group located near you. Hint: In advanced search, you must type both the state abbreviation (WA or OR or ID) and the full name (Washington or Oregon or Idaho) to get all in that state. It apparently searches by how they are entered. For instance I got four with "Washington" and 46 with "WA" but you can still find members in the Pacific Northwest that way. Many have farms that breed and sell.
It's great to have contact with folks near you as well as here on the group. There are lots of issues that are location specific. For example, I understand in our area copper is not a problem whereas in some it is. Conversely, we have issues here in our extra rainy climate (west of the Cascades anyway) that are different than other parts of the country. Learning the best places to buy feed in your area is invaluable.
Congrats on this wonderful new adventure on which you about to impart!
Hi there, Poppy Patch Nigerian Dwarf Goats is a very nice farm and has some amazing animals, they are only about 100 miles Seattle, WA . Here's there website http://www.poppypatchfarm.com/ . Welcome, Nigerians are the perfect backyard milkers!! Ive only been on this forum for a short time but I can tell it will be very helpful and the people are so nice, hope it helps you as well!
Best of luck,
Nick
rollinghillsnigerians.weebly.com
You need to continue adding clean straw on top, especially if kids are living in there. You can wind up with some nasty coccidia problems in kids if you don't keep it clean. The stuff down below starts decomposing, which increases heat in the barn a little. As long as your barn is well ventilated, it's fine. You don't want ammonia smell building up.
Debbie Nightingale said:
Just looking at this.....haven't done deep bedding....to be clear - its not cleaned out until spring/warm weather? No worries about bacteria and 'bad stuff' growing in there?
wrong -- googled -http://camanna.com/
Melissa Johnson said:
I would suggest you take a look at Camanna Petite Paradise.com she is in Siletz, OR and has beautiful, quality goats/kids. Fun to look anyway!
And Welcome!
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