This is Part 2 of an ongoing discussion of how to reduce waste in feeding hay to goats. Part 1 gives all measurements for the manger pictured below. This manger is built on exactly the same vertical measurements. It is 3 feet long by 2 feet wide in the horizontal dimension. Note that the place you put hay is only 9” deep!
The reason that this manger got built is that our barn is designed to be highly flexible, and there are times when we quadrant off sections that don’t have our wall mangers.
Additionally, there are seasons where we have more goats in a space than there are linear feet to a manger, and so the weakest get pushed aside.
I wanted to make a manger like the ones we have on our walls, but that was portable and accessible from all four sides.
This has fitted the bill admirably. I’ve seen as many as three adult goats on each side. For smaller herds, this design would prove ideal!
As with the wall version, the key to NOT having wasted hay is to NOT fill it above the level where the goats put their heads through to eat. If they don’t put their heads all the way in to eat, and stay there, this manger is no better than a slatted one, in terms of waste. The whole point of this design is that you drop a leaf of hay horizontal in the 9” bottom, and let the goats pull up on mouthfuls while leaving their heads inside the feeder.
See the demonstration below!
Ours is currently on our goat porch, so it is protected from rain and snow. However, one could easily extend the height of the four corner posts and affix a roof above this feeder if it were used primarily outside.
Using the lumber that we did, this manger is stable: it’s pretty heavy, but I find that two adults can move it easily.
So, tomorrow is November 1. It’s starting to be freezing temperatures at night, but I’ve been tracking early morning temperatures, and they are consistently 15-20 degrees higher inside my barn than the outside temps. Of course, it’s still warming up to the 60s during the day, with lots of bright sun. So, winter isn’t really here—yet!
If you follow this blog, you know that I had planned to have my girls on bare tables this winter. The reasoning was that pee would go down through (which it does) and I could clean off poo each day (which I now do) and they would be fine. The photo at the right is first thing each morning. Here’s where I detail the table construction.
Last winter was a mild one, and I used the kiddie pools, which worked well for warmth, but were difficult to clean out in the dead of winter. (I had to clean them out because pee was trapped in them and they became heavy and yucky within 10-14 days.) I have a friend in PA, though, who used bare tables for her does and had no problems last winter. BUT: it was a mild winter there, too. I wanted less heavy lifting in bad weather this year, so I decided to follow my PA friend’s lead, but wasn’t entirely sanguine about this plan. I had given myself the option of hanging radiant heaters over the tables, but upon pricing them, found them well out of our budget. So, I was unsettled.
The Dilemma
Then recently, a good and kind neighbor of mine (with a lot more experience with goats than me) had me come over and look at her barn, and talked to me about the benefits of deep litter. She had seen my blog posts and she believed that my goats would suffer from being on bare tables—that they would be cold and possibly get arthritis over time. I went away from our conversation thoughtful, and then prayed about her advice.
Now, I knew about deep litter before my neighbor spoke to me. We successfully use it with our chickens. But with goats, I do not like bare dirt floors. Been there, done that. We have clay for dirt, and the pee puddles as if the goats were on cement. And, I do not like cleaning out deep litter from mammals. In fact, my barn is designed such that if I had dirt floors, I could drive a tractor through it and clean that way (as opposed to the back breaking chore of using pitch forks and wheelbarrows). But, I chose to use rubber roofing over my clay floors instead of deep litter in winters.
I have had it for over a year, and I love this rubber because I can squeegee it daily and sluice it with water when it needs it and it gets really clean and the barn smells sweet because the pee runs out of the barn in our handy gutter. It takes less than an hour each morning to muck. I do it while my husband milks the goats.
In the picture at the right, that floor will be dry in 20 minutes or less.
BUT: I would not want my goats sleeping on the bare rubber floor. While the tables’ wood gave a decent R factor of insulation, the rubber on dirt has none of that. And then there was the cold air underneath the tables. Would they insulate the goats enough, being elevated? My neighbor’s advice kept rattling around in my head and heart, and I felt like I should heed it, but I didn’t want to give up that rubber floor!
My Solution
Deep litter boxes (instead of pools or bunks—the new experiment!)
After much thought and prayer, I had an idea. I decided to turn my tables upside down for the winter, building plywood sides that would keep hay in for bedding. This is similar to kiddie pools, but the cracks in the tables‘s boards allow pee to run out under the box, down the sloped rubber floor, and into the pee gutter that I now like and use.
The plan is to put a light topping of bedding over the poo each morning (deep litter) but not (as with pools) to put absorbent pellets in the bottom to trap the pee. Because the tables are rigid, we can simply elevate them over the sloped rubber floor. Note that we put blocks under the downhill side (front in these pictures) so that pee can run out from under the beds.
Construction step 1 is pictured at the left. Steps 2 and 3 (building plywood sides and then filling them with bedding) are below.
These plywood sides may stay on, becoming aprons after I flip them again in spring (to keep little kids out from under them) or we may just remove them. We’ll see!
With sides attached… bunks are still separate.
With hay on the bottom. Cozy!
So, this was our prototype. We built it in an hour yesterday, and then waiting to see how the does would vote with their hooves! Where would they choose to sleep? Bare tables or deep litter boxes?
Spoiler alert! This prototype “litter box” was a tremendous hit. The left picture below shows mother and daughter exploring the possibilities before lights out last night. The one on the right was taken on our barn cam at 6:15 AM. There were 9 does in the box right before I snapped this picture, 2 does on the bare benches nearby, and one on the rubber floor next to the box. Clearly, the does had shown their preference, and my neighbor was correct.
Bluebelle and Briar Rose exploring last night.
6:15 AM There were 9 in here just a minute ago!
So, this morning, my husband and I spent a couple of hours sawing up plywood pieces and repositioning the tables—upside down.
(Can I say again how MUCH I love modular solutions? SO glad that we didn’t build them into walls or build stalls in this barn!) These “litter boxes” aren’t screwed together; they are heavy enough that they stay put without it.
This is how it looked when I’d finished screwing the plywood sides in place, and putting in bedding.
Just a few quick notes below, and then I’m done.
One thing I quickly realized this morning was that we’d made an oops putting the trial bunk (pictured up above) in that corner. The problem is that this is where our kidding stalls will be erected in late January, and I’m hoping to not have to move these litter boxes until early spring. So we moved the trial box to become the closest of the three pictured right above.
When we moved that trial box, I saw that if I used hay that I cleaned out of the bottom of our mangers, it would have lots of fine “hay dust” that will sift down under the box during the night. Because I don’t want to impede the flow of pee out from under these boxes, I made sure to use our round bale bedding hay, which is more like straw, rather than use waste hay from our mangers.
And here they were on November 1, looking so cozy. Makes my heart happy!
You know how it is. You try one thing, and it’s good. But then it has problems. And you think, “There has to be a better way!” If you follow this blog, you know that I’ve tried floor bunks with deep bedding and pools with deep bedding atop our rubber barn floor. There were definitely pros to these, but there were cons as well.
The pros were that they kept our girls warm, and they nestled into them with their growing kids. We had enough that there was plenty of choice.
Thing is, the girls did pee and poo in them… so, maintenance. Sigh. The bunks got too heavy to muck at all easily. The pools, we had to drag out every week or two (some pools were more popular than others) and then redo them: pellets for absorption of pee, PDZ powder, and then a starting layer of bedding hay. (We bought year-old hay for bedding only.)
Pools are okay… They really are! And I still recommend them. BUT: they’re work, and we like to minimize work where we can! They also have the expenses of pellets, PDZ, and bedding hay. So, we’re trying something new: tables.
What are Tables?
Some people call them bunks. Ours are more like tables, so that’s what we call them.
We built them all identical and freestanding, so we can move them around in various configurations… because, if you’ve been following us for any length of time, you know that “modular is us.” We have configured them all in a row, or we have put them (more successfully) into blocks. (See pictures below.)
This picture shows the basic framing. The table top is 6’ x 3’. The framing is 2 x 4 legs that are 15” tall, with 2 x 3’s for the braces and horizontal struts. We have been using old fence boards for the surfaces.
I have found, by trial and error, that it’s best to keep the seams between boards snug. The goats will pee on these tables, but the pee will go down through tight seams, and the poo will not, which is beneficial on the back, because there’s less to bend and scoop when mucking.
Here’s the finished product, before goaty hooves (and hinds) have touched it.
As I said above, at first we put the tables in a line… this picture is taken first thing in the morning… all the girls are waiting to be milked.
As you see, they do poo on the tables at night. But, their udders seem to be just as clean in the morning as they were with pools.
Recently, we changed these tabes to be side by side in a square configuration. This is a night picture via video cam. You can see that it’s a pile of goats, grouped in families… I just love this picture!
Some of the does don’t want to sleep on the tables, but it’s still warm weather. We believe that the wood will be warmer than the rubber floor come freezing weather.
We don’t think we’ll need to bed with hay, but we may use heat lamps in the coldest weather, mounted above these tables.
In previous posts, I’ve explained that we chose rubber roofing material (all one piece) to cover the dirt floor of the barn we built in the summer of 2019, and written about various ways that we’ve found of cleaning the floor and economically bedding down our goats.
This post continues that series. It is comically subtitled “Piddle to the Sea.”
The Challenges
As I’ve explained, there are pros and cons to rubber floors. I have LOVED the fact that I can muck it every morning and keep it squeaky clean, because urine and poop do not seep into underlying dirt, but are removed daily. I have loved that it smells good in my barn. I have LOVED the fact that I’ve had no trouble with mites or cocci (one case among 25+ kids this year).
The only thing I have not loved is how long it took me each day to muck, and the unsuitableness of the tools I employed to do it. The main problems have been puddles and too-soft poops (the kind you get in the spring when goats first go out on pasture).
We have tried the following approaches:
Sweeping up berries with a broom, and allowing hay that falls from the manger to absorb most of the pee, while bedding the goats in bunks (that had to be dumped every week or so, and then re-bedded).
Using a broom to sweep up, but then employing a heavy-duty shop vac to remove urine, puddle by puddle, while still using pools.
Using a small, plastic squeegee/broom to get up the berries, then using the shop vac, puddle by puddle.
With all these approaches, morning mucking was taking 1.5 hours daily for a 48’ x 18th space.
The Breakthrough
My eldest son, Nathan, who is 39 years old, often helps us care for our goats when he visits. He was contemplating the situation, and we were discussing it one day, when he made a suggestion that turned out to be brilliant. He suggested terraforming.
Our barn was not leveled correctly by our excavator before it was built. Our fantastic builder had to compensate for a 10” drop over 48’ from front to back. He made that drop invisible to the human eye, but what it meant when it came to the pee on our rubber floor was that urine did run downhill and tended to puddle deepest towards the middle of the area.
Nathan’s idea was to peel back the rubber (which has never been attached to the sides of the barn), use our tractor to dig a center ditch, take out all the rocks in that dirt, and then spread it—plus some of the black sand that we had left from the original laying of the floor—on both sides in order to slope it yet more steeply to a central gutter.
The Process
We gathered five adults on a Saturday morning to tackle Phase I of the project. It had to be done in one day, because of human schedules and the need of the goats to have shelter at night. Phase I was to do the right side of the barn. Phase II was to remove mangers and do the right side.
In Phase I, we dug the center ditch about 8” deep using a tractor. This depth caused wrinkles in the rubber after we put it back. These wrinkles then inhibited flow in the gutter where they pinched, and berries got caught in those pinches.
We gave it three weeks of testing before doing Phase II. Initial results were impressive. Each morning, there were no puddles! The urine flowed gently downhill on the left side, and the (mostly dry) berries remained where I could sweep them up with my newly discovered industrial-sized squeegee.
After about three weeks, our crew reconvened to do the other side of the barn. In Phase II, we made the center ditch far more shallow. It works VERY well. It gets deeper and deeper as it travels downhill from the back of the barn to the front, thus making good use of that original 10” overall drop. It is less than an inch deep at the back of the barn, and maybe 6” deep at the front, but the overall drop makes the flow strong.
Below is a gallery of images that show the following:
Picture #1 is after Phase I and before Phase II. (As you can read in my next post, we replaced pools with tables.) Notice how the rubber is wrinkled, especially in the gutter. That’s because we made it too deep in Phase I.
Picture #2 is us working to slope the second side of the barn (Phase II) to the central gutter. It also shows us filling in the central gutter with black sand to ultimately make it more shallow.
Picture #3 shows how the floor looks each morning. The urine has run down into the central gutter and out of the barn. The berries remain: easy to use an industrial-sized squeegee to scoop together, then pick up into a muck bucket.
Picture #4: shows the cleaned floor, about 45 minute work. Scooping up berries, sluicing with remaining water bucket liquids, and then squeegeeing water off the rubber, into the gutter, to clean it thoroughly.
Wrinkles that resulted from ditch being too deep after Phase 1.
Phase II: filled in center ditch and sloping black sand from outside to inside.
We are still perfecting our infrastructure here at Storybook Farm. Last year, we had three goat litters widely spaced apart, and it was not hard to portion off generous parts of our barn spaces for moms and babies to bond and grow until they were ready to rejoin the herd.
This year, from late February to early April, we’re expecting six does to deliver, and some of those does are due only days apart. We have been doing research on “jug stalls” — small stalls that does and kids can inhabit for several days to bond tightly before rejoining the general population.
In addition, we have really found a benefit in providing a creep pen for kids who have begun to eat hay (which they do at about 2 weeks old). In this post, you can read about the prototype pen we made to see if we liked (or needed) such a space, and we found we really did. However, the creep gate that we bought from Premier 1 was both heavy and expensive, and not the easiest to join to our existing stall partitions. It’s great, and we’ll probably use it outside, but I got the idea of making jug stall partitions that would convert easily to creep gates, so that jug stalls could become creep pens for any number of little kids, should we so desire.
Below are shots of the construction of our three identically made panels. Obviously, you can scale to your space, but for reference, two of ours are 5’8” long, one is 5’7”, and all are framed in 2” x 3” lumber, with 10-gauge, 2” mesh fencing, 4’ high (purchased at Home Depot).
Each has a door that opens toward the humans, with the fencing towards the goats. When desired, the gate swings back and can be locked open, and then 1/2” metal conduit is inserted in pre-drilled holes so that the gate opening becomes a creep gate. There are construction notes on each picture below.
1. Begin the frame.
2. Frame door and hinge it.
3. Drill holes top and bottom
4. Put on wire w/staples
5. Drill holes for horizontal bars
6. Fit conduit and trim to correct lengths
Step 1: framing. We decided to make the uprights the strong part, and so they are a full 4’ long. The horizontal pieces are 5’5”, giving an overall panel width of 5’8”. The center strut (to which we hinge the door) is 45”.
Step 2: frame the door and hinge it. (We made our door openings 24” wide; you can make them any width.) The only thing I’d note here is that I left a sizeable space (a good 1/2” or more) vertically between the overall frame and the door frame because the wood is “on edge” and I didn’t want it to catch when operating. The two uprights of this door are 44.5” (so as to leave 1/4” of space for it to swing top and bottom) and then the horizontals were 19”.
Step 3: If you’re using metal half-inch conduit (which is cheap and can be found in any hardware store) for your creep gate function, it usually comes in 10’ lengths. So, you’ll need a Saws All or hack saw to trim it. (In picture 6, we were just fitting it; we hadn’t trimmed yet).
You’ll need a 3/4” bit to drill the holes in the top and bottom of the frame, swinging the door out of the way first. Half-inch conduit is 1/2” interior; it’s wider on its exterior, so a 3/4” bit works well. In the beginning, I did not drill all the way through on the bottom of the frame, but then I thought of dirt and poops lodging in the holes, and decided to go all the way through.
Spacing is a matter of personal preference. We raise Mini Nubian kids, so I know that we wanted spaces that could be adjusted from 3” (can’t get thru) to 4” (can get thru when itty bitty) to 5” (lasts from about 3-8 weeks) to 6” (about the widest we’ll need). My measurements for these holes (on center, in inches) in a 2’ opening were as follows, left to right: 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 19, and 22.
Another trick on this step: drill partially through the top of the door frame on the ONE hole closest to its non-hinged, top edge. Then, you can use a piece of conduit scrap as your latch and save money and labor!
Step 4: Affix the fencing wire. We used regular staples on each division of the wire, and then reinforced those with some leftover insulated electrical staples (hence the blue plastic on them). We found that large, standard, barbed fencing staples threatened to split the wood.
Fencing was affixed on the goat side of the partition, because mine LOVE to scratch themselves on woven wire, so we wanted the frame to be buttressing the strain. In this picture, as well, note the pressure-treated two 2” x 2” pieces on either side of the door. They are on the goat side, and are 14” long. (You do not need pressure treated, but it won’t hurt to have it. That’s what we could find, so we went with it.) See Step 5 for how we use them.
Step 5: If you try to simply bore holes for horizontal creep gate restraints in the same plane as the uprights, they will butt into each other. So, you need to create a deeper plane. Hence these pieces. We drilled three holes in each one, after screwing them to the frame, which is more than enough for our purposes.
Step 6: Fit your conduit into all holes to check for alignment, and then trim them to size. In this photo, we have yet to trim.
Final setup: above are our three panels, joined together with bolts and joined to each wall using eye hooks and conduit down thru them.
They will be divided with two 7’ lengths of the same 2” square mesh wire, to create three jug stalls and/or creep pens, depending on our stages of raising kids. We used bolts between the panels to join them together now, and (in keeping with our overall modular approach) to be able to take them apart when kidding season is over and we want the space for other things.
That door at the end leads to an area outside that we call “the playpen.” It is a kid-safe area outside where kids can go on nice days. The wire you see to the right divides this “nursery area” from the rest of the goat space.
Right now, we’re still storing round bales in the jug-stalls-to-be, but we’re going to clear that hay out this weekend and get the kid-warming huts set up, so stay tuned!
We have some young kids in with the herd, and with our new mangers, I was concerned that they weren’t able to graze spilled hay anymore, and that — when the hay was eaten down some — couldn’t reach the hay. (Yay for no more hay waste! Boo for hungry kids.) Also, we might have something like 12-16 kids coming from February to March, and I’ll want them to have a good place to get away, eat, and sleep, too, so, we’ve been experimenting with a creep pen for them.
Left is a video of the kids first exploring the prototype version that we threw together so that we could learn. (Hit the triangle if you don’t see a preview picture.)
This pen measures 5’ x 5’. It first had the kids’ heat hut in it, mostly to train them to it, then it had just the heat lamp above the kiddie pool, and now it just has the pool with hay in a purple bucket.
Obviously, those three 5-week-old kids were barely fitting in that kid hut by this time, and we certainly weren’t going to fit 15 in kid huts this spring. Thus, we will need a creep space come March, and it will need to be bigger than this prototype we’re playing with now. (More on the new and improved version that resulted HERE!)
In case you don’t know what a creep space is, it gets its name from the creep gate that will only allow a small baby — goat or sheep, or sometimes a puppy — to creep in while keeping adults out. Some farmers give food that they only want babies to have, and others want to provide heat or a rest area free from adult bullying. We use ours for all these features.
Our creep gate was made by Premier 1. It is very sturdy. It is built with holes that are drilled at specific intervals both tops and bottom and side to side. Moveable steel rods allow the farmer to adjust the height and width of the creep openings to the size of their growing young ones.
The basic gate comes with 5 vertical steel rods inserted into PVC slip covers, and one horizontal one. We invested in four more rods (black in the picture) from a local hardware store, but you can also buy extra rods from Premier. We found by trial and error that we needed six-inch openings for our littles to get in, and still keep out a petite 6-month old doeling in our herd.
We attached two 5’ goat panels to the gate and wall with carabiners and wire. That wooden wall behind is really one of our gates that leads to our barn aisle. This has proved very handy in servicing this area, though one can remove the rods to get into the area from the front.
Kids eating in peace.
Adults can’t reach the babies’ hay.
As you can see in the picture below, this creep space doesn’t take up much of our overall space, and the kids freely go out with the herd whenever they want to. We often find them in the pen in the early morning curled up together. (If you’re wondering about the kiddie pools, click here.)
We have had a building hay crisis at Storybook Farm. We got a delivery of what looked like excellent hay in the fall, but as we’ve been going through it, about 1/5 of our square bales have molded! (We have a brand new barn with an excellent hay loft, so the hay had to have become damp somehow before it got here. Luckily, I buy locally, and the farmer who made it has 100 bales on reserve for me, so I have more on the way if we get a break in the weather. But I digress.
It was the combination of the concern about hay shortage and the crazy amount the the precious hay that I was sweeping up each morning as I muck our rubber-floored stall that made me decide, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. There has to be a better manger that saves hay!”
We just couldn’t afford to throw out any more!
One of my biggest problems (besides waste) has been that, because we dam raise, little kids get into most mangers and do “the pee and poop dance” there. So, I was looking specifically for a solution for a group of mixed-aged does. I have kids that are 5+ weeks old, one that is 6 months old, three that are 9 months old, and then full-sized senior does—who range from small to large Mini-Nubians. Indeed, one of my does is almost the size of a standard Nubian.
These were my challenges going in, but I couldn’t be more pleased with the solution that I’ve found!
Fair warning: this manger solution is not for horned goats. That said, there are enough of us out there with disbudded goats that I think it’s worth the share. The above picture is the “before” shot. The picture at the right is the “after” shot.
I want to give a big shout out to the designers of this manger: creds to Thorcrest Farm in Canada for this outstanding design. From what I read, they’ve been tinkering with it for 25 years. They raise show-quality standard Nubians, but I followed their exact directions (using screws in case I needed to make adjustments) and so far, it’s working like a dream with Mini Nubians.
Some kind soul posted this picture of one of Thorcrest’s farm page posts, and the build was super easy. It took me (with a bit of help from Scott in a couple of places) about four hours to build from scrap wood found around our farm.
Below are pictures and videos (just hit the triangle even if there’s not a preview picture) of our does using the manger, and beside each one are comments that answer common questions that I’ve received on the Internet about this manger. Enjoy!
This video shows the step, which is about 5” deep. Skylark (at 5 weeks) can just balance on this step, but her tubby little body is too wide for her to turn to eat or to jump into the manger. YAY! Problem solved about kids playing in the manger!
She can, however, reach the manger from the floor. That opening is 2.5’ up from the floor, so she can’t just jump in. And, when the does eat it down to about half full, she can’t feed from it. But, since littles are still nursing and don’t need a lot of hay (and because they have their own hay in their creep pen, this feeder is just fine for her.
The picture (below right) shows does of three ages using the manger together. The doe at the right is a mid-sized, adult Mini Nubian, and can eat with all four feet on the floor. The doe in the middle is 6 months old, and easily reaches into the feeder. The doe on the right is six years old, quite pregnant, and is chowing down with her lips reaching to the bottom of the trough.
Note that the actual hay section of this manger is only 9” deep, so when feeding, throw in enough batts (flat) to fill only to the level of the lower edge of the opening. DON’T overfill it! If you do, they will “grab and go,” creating spills (also known as waste)!
I’ve been asked about the possibility of goats slipping on the step and hanging themselves. From my observations, this is highly unlikely. Small goats can get their heads out quickly, and larger goats can eat with all four feet on the floor if they are skimming the top layer of hay.
When a goat steps up on the step, she’s standing on four legs and perpendicular to the feeder. If she gets butted, she moves a bit, but has time to get her head out, and usually has one foot on the step even so.
Also someone asked if the does pull their heads out and waste hay that way. My answer is, “it depends.” MOST of the time, they leave their heads in and browse and munch. SOME of the does are nervous, and pull their heads out to look around. But, overall, there is SO MUCH LESS hay waste. I’m thrilled. THIS is the “after shot.” Below is the “before.”
Our plan is to build three more of these feeders for our goat space, replacing the feeders seen in this video. I think it’s clear why by now!
Final picture. Here I show that there’s a great space under this manger for kids to use as an away space. I sweep hay that does drop down to the floor (minimal) under the manger most days, and they can snuggle into it for a nap.
Note the end of the manger: we put a door on ours so that I can clean it out. With any manger, I’ve found, there’s a build up of tiny leaves and sticks that needs to be cleaned out from time to time. This little door makes that simple.
We also built a freestanding (therefore portable) version of this feeder. Details and more pictures are HERE.
And more recently, since we were running out of wall space for mangers, we began to convert our wall mounted ones to freestanding two sided ones, still with all the same great features. All we had to do was duplicate the side construction, and then put end boards on to stabilize it. We kept the cleanout door. It’s such a great feature.
This change now doubles the number of goats that can eat at one manger. Interior width is 32″: enough to lay two bats side by side down the length of the manger (which is six feet). To get an idea of how many goats this can serve, I include a picture from last week of them all crowding around to get at the hay we had just fed. This gives you an idea of why we needed to convert these mangers to give more linear feet.
Gallery of pictures below. it is the manger on the right in the first picture that was converted.
It’s 2020, and for those of you who are local to Storybook Farm, it’s time to launch our herdsharing program!I am SO excited about this!!! If, after you read this article, you are interested in sharing our herd, please sign up for the monthly newsletter from the box below. (Most of this post is excerpted from this month’s Herdshare Group newsletter.)
What is a Herdshare?
In many states, West Virginia included, it is illegal to buy raw cow or goat milk. However, there is no law against a person drinking raw milk from his/her own dairy animal.
But, what if you don’t farm, or can’t keep a cow or goat, but want all the wonderful health benefits of raw milk? WV law provides you an opportunity to purchase part ownership of a dairy animal, which then entitles you to consume milk from her. You, quite literally, are sharing the herd with the farmer and other raw milk lovers. At Storybook Farm, we raise only dairy goats, so we’ll talk about only goat milk for the rest of this discussion.
In a herdshare agreement one first pays a one-time fee per share of a goat. Each share makes you a part owner of the herd, and thus entitles you to a set amount of milk from your herd per week.
Because you now are part owner of one (or more) goat(s), you must also pay a farmer a monthly fee for boarding your goat(s), caring for the goat(s), and milking the goat(s).
The herdshare owner thus obtains (but does not purchase) the milk from his/her own herd. This arrangement is similar to arrangements of owning a share in a condominium (a timeshare), or to a CSA share for farm produce.
Additionally, some farmers also offer “value added” products, where they will turn your milk into cheeses or yogurt, for instance, for an added fee.
How Does it Work at Storybook Farm?
Farm herdshare agreements (which are legally binding contracts) vary from farm to farm. Here is how we intend to start our program for our first year at Storybook Farm.
First, the cost of a share in this first introductory year will be $25 per share. This is the cost of ownership of one share of the herd, and entitles the shareholder to 1/2 gallon of milk weekly and one truckload of manure, suitable for preparing garden beds each spring.
If you want to consume more than a 1/2 gallon per week (or get more manure — LOL), you can purchase two or more shares. We will have a total of 30 shares to offer in 2020.
The monthly board expense for the goat(s) per share will be $12.00. There are four weeks in the month, plus a few days. Some months are five week months. The board fee averages out to $2.50/week per share.
There will be modest start-up fees. The herdshare owner will need to purchase at least two (2) half-gallon mason jars (with lids) for distribution purposes. These will cost $3 apiece.
Storybook Farm will work out with each member of our herdshare how best to transfer the milk. Some will need to pick up at the farm; others can get delivery in/from Franklin, WV. Each week, herdshare owners must return a clean 1/2 gallon jar per share to the Farm for fulfillment of their milk allotment, unless they are receiving value-added products instead. (Obviously, since each shareholder owns two jars per share, you can return the empty jar(s) when you pick up each week’s milk.)
Storybook Farm will be offering Feta cheese, Chevre cheese, Mozerella cheese, and Greek-style yogurt as value-added products. Thus, if you wish to convert your weekly milk allotment to any of these products, you will add the cost of processing only. The end prices of these products will be similar to what is purchased in Franklin grocery stores from cow’s milk, but, of course, superior in terms of healthiness, freshness and taste!
Milk Comes with Babies!
Speaking of milk, we confirmed that 7 of our 9 adult does are pregnant! For those who are interested, our Breeding Plan and due dates are here: https://storybookfarmwv.com/breeding-plan/. Why not go there now and choose the doe of whom you’d like to purchase a share?
You may notice (on that page) that we’ve already kidded out Sparrow. Her kids (below) came on December 9 (making a busy month along with preparing for our family of 22 people for Christmas). Sparrow gave us three gorgeous doelings. You can read all about them here.
Sparrow’s three girls
Help Us Spread the Word!
If you are local to Storybook Farm (and/or Franklin, WV, where we’ll be making deliveries) you can join in! Please forward a link to this post to friends and family who would enjoy becoming joint herd owners.
In next month’s Herdshare Group’s newsletter, I will be detailing the many benefits of goat milk and giving a tour of our state-of-the-art milking facilities. I’ll also discuss ways that we will be making our milk as safe and sanitary as possible, including getting the herd tested for TB and Brucellosis in early March. Milk distribution will start in late March.
I plan to send an email to this group monthly, at the least. My goal is to inform you of events that are of interest to those who partner in our herd, or are considering doing so. In busy months where our herdsharing is in high gear (from late March through early September) we may be sending updates or information more frequently.
Those who follow this blog regularly will remember that we purchased Echo Hill’s Sparrow last July as a foundation doe of our new herd. (We had previously purchased Sparrow’s son, Rigel.) Two days before we were to pick her up, Rigel’s sire broke through electric fences to mate one last time with his lady love. (So romantic!) Bethany Bisherat gave me the option of canceling the sale, but I love Sparrow and Rigel was great, so I went through with the sale.
I couldn’t be happier that we made that choice! Sparrow is a beautiful, refined doe, who easily earned her milk star last year and, as Bethany put it last February, “turned into a Holstein”! Her udder is capacious and her teats are soft. She is a joy to milk. She is docile, sweet, and has proved to be the most attentive and patient of mothers.
The Kids Arrive
Of course, the icing on the cake is that she gave us three beautiful copies of herself to populate our new herd! We were amazed to be blessed with three doelings. The video below is of them only hours old. Mom is patiently still washing her new kids; Maggie (far right) is learning to scratch herself while standing up!
In keeping with our practice, we have thematic names that help us remember blood lines. Since Sparrow is a bird, her doelings needed to have bird names. First born was Chickadee, then came Skylark. We thought we were done. There was a significant time lag while we waited for the placenta–but lo! A third doeling, Magpie, was born. (Then, two placentas!)
I have since learned that a goat’s womb has two “horns.” Each can house multiple kids. It’s probable that Chickadee and Skylark were in one horn, and Magpie (Maggie in the barn) was alone in the other. This would explain why Chickadee and Skylark are smaller than Maggie, who is the longest and deepest of the sisters. Chickadee and Skylark have moonspots.
Meet Them One by One
This is Chickadee, hours old. She is mostly brown, with some white and many moonspots. I so love her ears and breed character! She was firstborn, and the smallest by quite a bit.
This is Skylark at 3 weeks old. She has a very pretty, feminine face, and is both deep and long.
At first glance, she’s hard to distinguish from her younger sister, Maggie. The way we most quickly tell is that the spot on her back is not connected to the brown on her side, she has moonspots, and there is no black on her legs.
Below is a gallery of Maggie shots. She is the third born and biggest of the three sisters. Viewed on her right side, she is hard to distinguish from Skylark, but from her left side, the brown markings form almost a map of North and South America!
After two weeks, a friend online pointed out that she was folding her ears back (bottom left). This is a fault if left unattended. Thus, we devised a “hat” for her to train her ears. It needs to stay on for about two weeks. Naturally, she loses it regularly! We then tape it back on. She’s really good about it; it’s mostly lost when she battles her sisters for a drink from Mom’s two teats.
Maggie’s right side
Maggie’s front
Maggie’s folded ears
Maggie’s corrective cap
Of course, the biggest joy of having baby goats is sharing them with our grandchildren!
When I first started with goats, I purchased two milk stands made of wood. They have served us well, but they bother me because, even though we wash them down with bleach and soapy water every day, they never look clean. I just know that dirt (and germs) are seeping into the wood, and while the milk never comes in contact with them, they still bother me, especially when seen in relief to our new milking parlor!
I decided to upgrade our milk room stands and use these two older ones elsewhere for things like clipping, hoof trims, the buck house, etc. In all, we’re making four new stands for the milk parlor.
The first thing I decided was that I wanted metal mesh stands, because I could hose them off, and the dirt would fall through them to the floor. Good luck! Each one costs $200+ (not counting shipping)! We weren’t going to pay that (no money left after barn building—LOL) so I thought of making a heavily painted white wood frame using the same basic design as our original ones, but getting a local welder to make metal floors that will fit onto the wood frames like shoe box lids. They are thus removable for cleaning.
I found a local welder who made them out of expanded steel, #9 (which means that the diamond-shaped holes are 3/4”), and raised (not flattened) for extra traction for the goats.
It cost me $60/stand to have these fabricated. Then, we built the wooden parts and tried the new floors on for size. They fit perfectly!
So far, so good!
However, in researching this approach, I discovered that the steel, left unpainted, would rust. 😢 So, of course I had to paint them.
This was not at all difficult using spray paint.
I used Rustoleum brand high-gloss white—again, working for that washability! I sprayed both sides of the metal floors.
After the floors of the stands were each spray painted with two coats, I took the wooden part of the first stand outside and used a brush to paint it.
It was more labor intensive than spraying, but the high gloss paint went on nice and thick with a brush—which was important to me for washability in the years to come.
That’s about it! I love how they look in our new milk room, and they are working just as I wanted them to: the dirt drops through them, and the raised expanded metal gives plenty of traction for my does as they jump up and down.
