Thinkin' Spring

I don't care what the weather report says, I'm thinking spring and will continue to try to keep spring on my mind no matter how much ice I'm breaking.

There plans to build a green house probably next month. It won't be anything spectacular. Truth be told, I'm a real big fan of cattle panel hoop houses. (Click on the blue letters and it will take you to some photos of what I'm talking about). We get some pretty severe wind storms here but I read an article recently of a guy in Iowa who raises calves in them for a few weeks and says his won't blow away. They are staked down well and reinforced and Jeremiah and I have some ideas of our own to get one erected for seedlings. 

The cattle panel hoop houses are great for so many things, including animal shelters (click on the blue letters again to see photos of animal shelters) and I have been a long time amirer of them. We've bought 20 or so used panels from here and therefor fairly inexpensively and since my barn would require a bit of modification to keep kids completely safe from predators, I'm thinking about erecting a couple panel houses to keep kids in. I haven't looked too much into sturdy waterproof canvas or duct tarps for an animal shelter but for a green house, Lowes or Home Depot carries heavy duty plastic sheeting that would do real well for a green house.

I got my first seed catalog in the mail yesterday so later today when the kids are home from school we'll go through and circle all the things we'd like.

I've been cleaning the girls barn practically everyday and dumping the contents of the wheelbarrow onto the future garden site. We have very loamy soil here on our property, I hear things do real well on it with some good fertilizer. I certainly have that, and A LOT of it! Around the end of March we may start rototilling the garden site to work in all the amenities we've been putting out and with seedlings started early, come planting time in May (or whenever it is) we should have no problem getting a few things to grow this year. We're all very excited to get started with spring and winter has barely just begun. We do expect a couple of warm days (by warm I mean high 40's) this week followed by a storm next Sunday. I'll take high 40's. Heck, I'll even take 40 if the sun's out and there's no wind.

We have an underground spring that feeds the pond. Just the other day while cleaning brush I also discovered we have a creek bed that feeds the neighbors smallish pond in the front corner of their property! Right now there are deer bedding in it. We're working towards clearing out the massive amounts of down trees and limbs in it. Jeremiah would like it looking like a real creek bed by spring. Eventually we'd like shore up the one side of the pond (where I usually take photos from), cut out a lower bank on the creek side and see if we can't actually get it running. If not running, the main purpose would really be to keep the water out of the back yard as that's the lower side of the pond. In very wet years, the neighbor says there can be standing water out by the goat's pen fencing. Some day Jeremiah would also like to get a windmill water pump working to keep the pond full all year round and to water the garden as they are both close to each other. In fact, we plan to use the underground spring as our garden water since it is very close to the surface. I'm guessing that the meandering stream of bermuda grass is the path the stream takes, the water is supposed to be pretty close to the surface so while we may fight the grass in the garden, until we can get a windmill in for running water, we're hoping the ground water and rainwater are all the garden will require. Otherwise we'd have to run a fairly long hose from the house to the garden.

Water has been piped out to the barn from the house and we could try to locate that, trench across the back yard to run a spigot, but I don't know if all that will happen this year. We'll see. Baby steps!

That's all for now...we've always got a thousand ideas running through our heads. Only so much time and money though :o).

Spring 2011 Pasture Plans

Spring plans for more pasture. My apologies if it's a bit confusing. It's a lot easier to understand if you've seen the current set up.

This should allow us to get 4 nice pastures in and move the bucks into a larger space than they have now. We're hoping to significantly cut down on feed costs with spring and summer grazing.

Barn Raising Splitting

Despite our best efforts we did not finish the barn splitting this weekend.

I cannot explain it but time in Kansas goes three times as quick as anywhere else. I just don't understand it. I will check the clock, 9 o'clock. Not 2 minutes, TWO MINUTES, later and it's 9:45! How is that possible?

Saturday morning we headed to Lowes for our cattle panels. I cannot believe how long it took to demolish the middle portion of wood partition that was up. There were probably no less than 14 old rotten pallets as well in the back portion of the barn in the ground where the hay used to be stored. We had planned to leave them but Jeremiah pulled one up and it was rotten to the core so up they all came. Which was a good thing actually. They would have had to have come up eventually.

(standing in the "open" area, milk room behind me, looking out into the new hay area)

The corner of the barn has a pretty substantial beam (4x6) that had about 6 inches rotted away from the ground up. The corner vertical beams are sunk into the ground and the concrete foundation is poured starting from each beam to the next corner for the framing to sit on. Jeremiah had to install a few pieces of 2x6 that are sitting on the concrete now and stabilize it permanently. It wasn't too big of an issue.

We managed to get it split half way back with panels, install the feeders and jerry rig it the rest of the way with a 12 foot gate to keep them from getting into the "open area". It'll do just fine to keep them out of the hay too. I forgot to buy the horse panel (4"x4" openings) for the kidding area. We were at Lowes and they only carry the horse panels at Tractor Supply. We'll pick it up this coming weekend when we take the livestock trailer to the dump.

(Future kidding pens area in the back of the barn. They'll be two once we pick up the horse panels)

I am really loving how it came out so far! I LOVE being able to feed the girls from the "safe" side of the fence. I no longer am mauled* when it's feeding time.

*As much as a goat could possibly maul you being as how they have no upper teeth on the front portion of their gums and the fact that my does wouldn't hurt a fly.

At any rate, hay comes in today.

Project Hay Storage & Kidding Stalls

My apologies in advance if the photos in this post look crappy. I have yet been able to keep a digital camera working for longer than a few months.

Normally the camera dies in a liquid related accident (i.e. #1 bottle milk when Rachel was 9 months old. #2 I washed it! #3 I can't remember but it had something to do with water #4 wet clothes). But this one was not liquid related, the screen just stopped working altogether.

My digital camera has a screen on the back, that's what I look at to see what I am taking a photo of. For those of you used to the old cameras, it's the "window" you looked through (or don't/didn't depending on your photography style and how much actually cared about what you were taking a photo of) to see what you would be taking a photo of. Anyway, my screen is now just white, I can no longer see what I would be taking a photo of. I don't know what I did to it. Quite honestly, I was just holding it and it crapped out. So, please excuse me while I shoot blind.


This weekend, before we go get our big* load of hay, we need to change the barn around a bit. I hadn't planned to do much to the barn at all. As you can see it's about 1 1/2 times as deep as it is wide. Keep in mind, the previous owners had horses so everything was made for horses. We've had to lower gates and rig fencing, etc.

*big is an under statement from what were used to. Because hay prices in our area go up over winter, because we have the space to store it, because we don't have the time to go get hay once every month or so, because I have no idea what the winter will be like, and because we cannot just go to the feedstore to pick up hay if in the event we need a few bales (because feed stores don't carry hay!) I want to stock up as much as possible (which I am hoping is enough to last until next March when the pastures start to green up), that's about 8 months worth of hay to the tune of about 240 bales!

There are two front "stalls" with gates that swing shut (as you can see one is closed, the other is open inward against the wall). My original plan was to attach a piece of plywood to one gate and close it for winter. The goats would enter the stall though the one opened gate and enter the other stall through the opening just on the other side of the green water bucket there on the ground. The plywood would create a wind block.

I am not very concerned about cold temps. They've arrived in plenty of time to acclimate to the cold. They'll have each other to keep them warm, a dry shelter and to be quite honest, they'll have it made in comparison to some. I won't be kidding in the dead of winter- aiming for late winter/early spring with most of them- and there is electricity in the barn if in the event it's needed.

At any rate, the back portion...

is mostly hay storage. 1/8 of the barn is taken up by the tack room (my new milk room) which can barely been seen in the photo above in the upper right hand corner and in the photo below in the upper right. It's basically a box built within the barn- concrete floor, lights and outlets.


In the photo below I am standing at about the milk room door looking into the stalls with the current hay storage area to my right. (Please excuse the mess. That big wooden gate on the left used to be where the tube gate is now)...

the tube gate used to be located here...


to separate the stalls and the place in the lower left hand corner that looks wide enough for a horse to walk through (though not tall enough) was actually blocked by a big galvanized water trough that could be accessed by both stalls.

The opening where the tube gate was (center screen photo above) is where I had planned for the does to enter the stall that was draft free (see plywood on gate). The new plan though is instead of the front of the barn being totally for goats (as it is now), we are going to use the stall that I am currently standing inwhen I took the photo above (where they currently eat) as the new hay area. We will be splitting the barn in half lengthwise instead of width-wise which takes care of a lot of the concerns I had in regards to kidding and warmth and electricity and ease of use, etc with all the goats being exposed up front.

Where the hay is stored right now...

...will become 2 kidding stalls that will open up right into the loafing area.

With the new configuration, the goats will have half of the barn on the entire west side. The east side will be my milk room in the back (approx.) 1/8th, the front portion will be hay storage and the last (approx.) 1/8th in the middle is an area I will leave open as an aisle-way/open area (to be used as the possible location of show shaving later on, etc. since there are outlets there).

There is a gate...


on the outside (as well as a red sliding door that will be closed in the winter more than likely). I can bring the does in for milking from a gate along the new center wall from the loafing area into the open area and then into the milk room. They'll exit the barn completely from the big orange gate (or door, depending on time of year). This would be helpful if the gate on the front of the doe's area of the barn was shut so the milked does couldn't get back in causing havoc, which isn't usually a problem since they go back to eating once fully milked and always establish a milking pecking order but it's just a thought anyway.

The gate on the new hay storage side will be shut to keep the goats out (and deer and anything else that would like to get in to eat my yummy hay). The gate on the front of the barn on the doe's side will still have plywood installed on it as a wind block but this will also allow me to shut them in (and shut out cold and other creatures). I don't find locking them up totally important, but in the winter it may be necessary for warmth as well as when we have small kids. The property isn't fenced to keep out coyotes and the barn isn't so close to the house that I could hear something before it was too late. And for a host of other reasons.

It may be necessary to exchange the one large gate on the front of the barn on the west side where the does will be for 2 shorter ones so that one could be shut to block the wind and the other could be open so they could come and go.

We can load hay from the front of the barn and I will access the hay area from a gate in the open/aisle way for feeding. I can feed from the hay storage area as I plan to have feeders along the center wall. I haven't yet decided what the wall will be made out of, but it would be nice, quite honestly, if it were just cattle panels. The hay wouldn't be so close the goats could reach it but the wall would be easy to take down if we ever wanted to (and not as expensive or labor intensive as 2x4's and plywood).

As I've mentioned before, for those who don't know, the cattle panels have large enough openings of 6" x 6" on the upper portion (from about 2' high to the top) . It's plenty of room for a goat without horns to stick his/her head through. Cattle panels are normally 16 foot long and 42" tall with graduated spaces starting small on the bottom.

We figure we can get 10 pallets (2 deep and 5 long or 5 deep and 2 wide depending on how you look at it) or more into this new hay area. Stacked 8 high, we can get 160 bales. Stacked 9 high we can get 180. Providing they are snug up against the east wall of the barn, that leaves me plenty of room for an aisle between the center wall and the wall-o-hay in which to feed the goats from (and enough room that they cannot stick their heads through and feed off the bales). We have a lean-to that is about 20' wide and 8-10' deep that has 2 fenced pens. One side of that lean-to will be additional hay storage

We could leave just as it is with the back portion being hay storage and we could get more hay in there but this new configuration gives us 2 kidding stalls at the back of the barn where we can insulate and it allows for a better flow for milking and easier hay loading. As it is right now, the trailer has to be backed up to the sliding door and unloaded from there which is somewhat of a pain.

In regards to the kidding pens: The "walls" separating the 2 pens from each other and dividing the pens from the loafing area will just be horse panels. Horse panels are just like cattle panels but the openings are 4" x 4" all over which will be safer for birthing mama's and tiny babies (i.e. kids cannot go through the openings, cannot be born into the openings possibly hanging them, etc.). I can hang water buckets off the panels. Feeders can be attached to the panels without having to drill holes and install mounting bolts. It will allow the does to see her herd mates and interact, be close to them, but keep new kids at a safe distance from other does and offer security to the new babies and mamas. I can remove the panels completely if I wanted to for cleaning or whatever the case may be. The walls along the actual barn itself will be insulated and plywood or chipboard will be installed 4 foot tall for an extra buffer from cold.

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As a side note, once the kids are old enough to be separated from mama at night (I usually start this from 2-4 weeks) this will be an area that I can place the kids.

I have found that it is much less stressful to A. separate at night when most of the time away from each other is spent sleeping and B. the kids and dam can see each other. Why do I separate? For those of you who don't know, I take the morning milk for household use. The kids, by 2 weeks of age (and for those kids that are dam raised and not bottle raised they are often nibbling on hay the DAY they are born) should be eating hay and grain. It's not a lot, but they do eat it. In the wild, the dam spends much more time away from their kids as captive goats do. They leave kids unattended to go eat themselves just like deer (they are related after all). When the kids are old enough to venture out (usually by 2-4 weeks) with their dam, they are eating forage much more often and are not so dependent on the amount of milk they normally would get in domesticated situations. By separating, I cannot mimic nature exactly but it is a way for the doe to provide us with milk before weaning and a way to get the kids eating naturally without being any more unnatural as possible.

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The floors in this barn are just earth except the milk room with the concrete. I like concrete floors with straw for bedding and while this barn is good shape for its age, I think we'll just go with rubber mats to keep the dirt in and for ease of clean up. Which, as you can see by a few of those photos, I have not bee doing. Stall and feeding area clean up used to be, normally, a daily thing. Right now they don't sleep in there unless it rains so most of this waste hay isn't soiled or wet.

So, there's our project for the weekend. It shouldn't be too labor intensive or expensive but does need to be done because the load of alfalfa is just about ready to be picked up and I don't want to load hay into the back of the barn just to have to remove it later.

So, without further ado here is the new hay barn layout! You're probably going to wish you had skipped all that rigmarole before this I'm sure. You know me, have to make a short story long. And sorry, it's a bit off kilter. I blame the scanner.

P.S. You can click on the "photo" below and it will enlarge it for ya.

P.P.S. This is NOT to scale. As I mentioned, the milk room is approx. 1/8 of the whole barn, the "open" area is about 1/8 and this barn is about, I don't really even know for sure but I am going to say about 24' x 36'. The kidding pens will be about 8' deep x 6' wide each. They could be made deeper, but with the width, I'd like to get 2 in side by side in between the milk room outer wall and the inside wall of the barn but this is the general plan.


In the rafters above the spigot on the inside there is an electrical outlet in which a tank heater is hung in the winter to keep the water from freezing. The heater's cord will be placed inside a piece of PVC pipe to keep from the goat's chewing on it and cooking themselves.

Right now I have a long hose attached to the spigot but in the winter I will have to reattach the hose that is only about 2 foot long so that the water inside the hose can drain off so it doesn't freeze.

That spigot is a special spigot. It has a valve inside the pipe at the bottom of the whole piece (where it attaches to the main water line which is below the frost line) that allows the water to siphon back into the main pipe so that water is not left in the vertical pipe to freeze.

As for the bucks, their set up isn't so nice at this point and I may just be bucketing unfrozen warm water over to them but, at least for this winter, that's what it'll have to be. I can move them over to the other lean-to though where there is electricity (and where the excess hay storage will be on one side) but that's not top priority right now.

I was talking about those old water troughs earlier. We have probably 9 of them! My thought is to flip them upside down, cut a u shaped opening on the face of a couple of them and a square shaped opening up top, place metal screening over the square opening on the top and a head lamp can sit on that. It then becomes a heated kid house to sit in the kidding pens, or just outside with an opening in the cattle panel for the kids to get though into the heated house which would save space in the pen.

I have no idea what winters will be like. I am bracing for the worst. I don't want to kid so late in the year when it warms up (in JULY) that the kids won't be ready for fall breeding, but I also don't want frozen kids. Ca. average winter temperatures will have nothing on this place, or so I expect so I am daily thinking about ways to survive comfortably.

Anyway, there it is. And that's all for today.