I'm actually a bit ashamed of this story.
For a bit of background, my husband and I moved to our farm 3 years ago. We were lucky to find a former cattle ranch that was within our price range because it was slightly farther from the city than most people want to drive, and the people selling it were getting divorced and just wanted it gone. There are several barns/stables/shelters on it as well as the farmhouse.
We got our first goats 2 years ago and have been slowly building our herd. We've been using the stable that is closest to our house as our main goat barn with does and young kids, and have the bucks and weaned kids in a barn a bit farther away. We knew that the buck barn had been a hog barn at one point, and it had a side portion attached to it that was a farrowing (pig mother/baby) area. The farrowing area hasn't been used in over 10 years. I'd peeked into it a couple of times shortly after we moved here, but, although there are windows, the power was off to it and I didn't think much of it. My husband had never been in until this weekend when he was thinking about using it for goat kids. He took a flashlight in and this is what he found:
Seven individual stalls. Each stall is about 6' by 6'. No gates, but that would be easy to fix. At the back of every stall is a heater box to keep little piglets warm.
The gap at the bottom with the wire hanging out is the opening to the heater box.
I can't believe we didn't pay attention to this before. I'm slightly horrified that we have spaces that we don't know about.This will make an awesome kidding barn. We'll have to check out the wiring, but even if the heaters don't work and we aren't able to put some in for next spring, the boxes should still be cozy for baby goats.
I'm really quite excited about this.
Comments
That is fantastic! I wonder what else you might find on your farm where you haven't looked yet!
Congrats!That looks like a pretty easy fix to have heated kidding pens! Lucky!
I wish we had more outbuildings, we're short one 5 stall building from our other farm. Be pleased you are still finding more space, especially if it's mostly fixed to be perfect for a use! We used our farrowing pens at our last farm for a chicken house (before goats).