Goat pen maintenance - need some tips

[FarmerKat]

I do not think that our goat pen is ideally set up for clean up and I need some tips on how you manage your pens.

There are some things I cannot obviously change (like the building) but I am sure I can improve others. Their pen is in a small wooden pole barn. The pen is 8 x 12 feet, enclosed on 3 sides. The front is open but has a gate made of a cattle panel. The floor is dirt.

Inside the pen is a hanging feeder (like this one), hanging water bucket and a homemade hay feeder (built out of cattle pannel, 1 ft off the ground, filled with loose hay). I have put straw on the ground for bedding. We also have square hay bales stacked up 2 high along the wall to provide better insulation. I lock the goats up in the pen at night and let them out in the morning. The pen stays open during the day.

I started locking their pen at night because they liked to sleep with the pigs and were messing up the pig pen (the pig pen is set up the same, minus the feeders and waterer). Since the pigs do not pee and poop in their pen, I did not want them to have to put up with goat excrement and this way I have at least one clean pen.

I pick up the goat poop out of their pen but I wonder how often their complete bedding should be changed (obviously, I miss pieces and there is no way to remove urine). How much straw do they really need on the ground since it seems I need to replace it often? What do you do with the bedding that has been removed?

Any tips or suggestion? Thanks!

[msscamp]

How many goats are we talking about? I do not bed my sheds during the summer months because the girls don't use them unless it's raining. Since you lock yours in at night, I would suggest changing the bedding once a week or when it becomes obviously dirty. In between changes, a good sprinkling of ag lime or sweet pdz will control the ammonia and help keep the shed dry. About the end of September, I stop cleaning my sheds. I sprinkle the ag lime/sweet pdz heavily and add new bedding as needed. This allows a manure pack to build up that puts off heat as it decomposes, keeping the girls warmer. My pens are too big to clean by hand, so once a year Dad comes in with a front-end loader or skid steer. The hay/manure is then either dumped on the manure pile(fall) and spread the next spring, or spread on the hay fields(spring) using a manure spreader. The colder the temps, the deeper the bedding. I think the deepest I've done is a little above their fetlocks. Does that help?

[FarmerKat]

Thank you for sharing. I am sorry I forgot to say that I have 2 wethers that are 3 1/2 months old.

[Clovers_Clan]

This is what works for me. Because I have a plentiful and free supply, I fill the barn with a mixture of fresh fallen oak leaves and composted leaves in the fall. I like that the leaves become more absorbent(to both moisture and odor) as they decay. I've never needed to use lime with this method. As mentioned the deep bedding is great for both composting AND generating heat/insulation. Straw has a tendency to mat together, but the leaves are much easier to scoop. Early spring I clean the barn and fork the compost directly into the garden.

A side note. The pigs probably do not mind the goat droppings. They are an excellent source of Thiamine. And pigs/goats do not share parasites, so its fine that they eat them.

[sammyd]

deep bedding....
We cleaned ours out twice a year, in the spring and fall.
Once in a while you can kneel on the pack and if your knees get wet it's time to add a bit more bedding. We did not have to add lime and the girls were very clean.
Our old pen was 10x24 but we had a few more goats. Started with 6 or 8 bales of straw run through a chopper.
The hay feeders I used were not the best and for the most part the goats bedded themselves. I would throw a bale of straw in once in a while.
By the end of winter I would have 10 or 12 spreader loads but in the fall it would be less since they were out on pasture during the days of summer.

[nehimama]

This summer I cleaned out a winter's worth of accumulated urine-soaked wasted hay and goat berries. What a job! This winter I plan to use wood shavings for bedding and *hope* that spring cleanout will be easier. I'm talking about seven goats and one LGD in a pen approx 12' x 8'.

[motdaugrnds]

I built my barn to open into the garden via a 10 ft metal gate. This permits easy use of the bedding when I do clean the barn out.

In years past when my goat herd was six breeders and their kids, I cleaned the floor of the barn in early spring after kidding. It has a dirt floor so, after the cleaning, I always leave it open for the chickens to scratch in and for the sunshine to dry. (During good weather my goats enjoyed sleeping in my front and/or back yards only sleeping in the barn when it was pouring down rain.)

Every 3-5 yrs I take off the top 2-3 inches of soil in that barn and cover the floor with the same amount of "agricultural" lime. Then add some new straw (preferring Japanese millet when I can find it but most of the time only rye). Then I let that build up with wasted hay from their feeder bins to make a nice bedding for winter months.

[FarmerKat]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I am thinking deep bedding is the way. I also like the idea of using leaves, we have tons that could easily be blown into the barn. What a great idea.

[mzgarden]

We have a converted horse barn with dirt floors and our two girls are in one stall. Good weather they are outside but always locked in their stall overnight. Summer time we rake the stall of berries each morning and compost them. We sprinkle ag lime on the favorite urine spots once or twice a week. That worked pretty well for us. Now, coming into winter we will go to deep litter and not rake until Spring. So far, we put down ag lime, covered with a 2-3" layer of clean sand and added a thin layer of straw on top. The sand helps the urine drain away. We add more straw to move toward deep litter, as the weather chills. They have sleeping shelves and an XL igloo dog house in the stall for them and they snuggle together in that to sleep when it's cold. Hopefully the layer of sand will make it a little easier to get the accumulated straw removed next Spring.

[msscamp]

Originally Posted by nehimama

This winter I plan to use wood shavings for bedding and *hope* that spring cleanout will be easier. I'm talking about seven goats and one LGD in a pen approx 12' x 8'.

I wouldn't count on it. Wood shavings left in the shed all winter get wet and dry to the consistency of concrete - at least mine did. I only used wood shavings for the first year, and it took me about 2 years to get them all out of the shed. I literally had to chip them out a little at a time. But, it also houses a lot more than 7 goats, so you might not have the same problem.

[mammabooh]

I use sawdust from the Amish neighbor's sawmill as a base. In the fall, I run fallen leaves through the chipper/shredder and dump those on top of the sawdust. The goats have several sleeping benches. And I sweep those every day.