goats – Storybook Farm

Posted on February 5, 2023January 11, 2024 by Marcia — Leave a comment

Kidding 101: Part 2

Part 2: Normal Labor and Delivery

This series is not meant to be comprehensive, but I hope that it’s helpful, especially to those facing pregnant mommas with no experience. I wish I had had such a webpage series when I was where you are now!

Part 2 focuses in on the basic steps and signs of normal labors and deliveries, which a vast majority of deliveries are. Part 3 focuses on delivering with more difficult kid positions and gives a few ideas of how to help distressed kids.

Follow this link to see other article in this series: Part 1: Preparing for Kids

I always pray for my animals when they are pregnant, and especially so during delivery. God is very gracious to help our animals and us through deliveries. He loves the animals that He has created (see Numbers 18: 14-17) and redeemed. I have done some of my deepest spiritual growth during stressful labors. Turning to the only One Who can really help is natural to me, and I highly recommend it as a normal practice for you!

Is She OK?

Our does can get SO big and look SO uncomfortable during the last month or weeks of pregnancy. Here is a small gallery of pictures of Candy (two with my barn cam at night) in her last week of pregnancy in 2023. I just feel SO BAD for them, but be reassured, they are fine and those babies will eventually come out.

The thing to watch for most when does are big with multiple kids is their behavior. If they seem listless, low energy, or “walking on eggshells” then suspect pregnancy toxemia and/or ketosis. Read up on these and lay in supplies so that you can detect/treat them!

To detect or confirm these conditions, I buy new each year (because they do expire) Ketone strips. You can find them at any drug store. You hold them in a doe’s pee to detect ketones. We give our girls small amounts of grain, with Vitamin E and red raspberry leaves starting at 3 weeks out from their due dates.

Signs That She’s Getting Ready or in Early Labor

Spoiler Alert: A doe may have none of these signs, or all of them. The Doe Code keeps us guessing!

Taken together, the signs give a pretty good warning that “today’s the day (or night!)” but a doe can fool you.
For grins and giggles, watch THIS VIDEO to give yourself a stress reliever and reality check. Does have their own body clocks, and usually obey Murphy’s Law to the letter! 😉
The Doe Code is real, so find some stress relievers and pace yourself. Try to not stay up all night watching the barn cam from a week before the due date. My husband and I check a doe who’s soon due, watch and watch, every two hours (He wakes up at 2 AM and 6 AM, while I wake up at 12 AM and 4 AM). Thus, we both get 4 hours sleep at a time on those nights when it’s feasible that a doe could deliver, or is overdue and needs watching. Given your resources, choose a pace that’s sustainable for you!

OK: the list of SIGNS. From the earliest indicators to “this is probably IT!” signs.

Check her ligaments. Next to the tail, there are two ligaments (that support tail wagging) which, before delivery, soften and seem to “disappear.” (See more details on the ligs here.) In goat-speak, we talk of a goat’s “ligs being gone.”

Full disclosure: I’ve had does whose ligs go a week or two before delivery. But, for many does, it’s a good indicator that labor is a day or two away — or closer. Remember, it’s just one of the many signs that labor is close at hand.

Look at her udder. Taking pictures every couple of days, starting when they are 2 weeks out or so, can really help newbies to see changes. A doe’s udder starts to be noticable anywhere from 6-8 weeks before due date. BUT, it really grows in the last few weeks, and typically, you can really tell a difference in the udder and teats when labor is 24 hours (or less) away (right picture is 2 days later than left). The udder will be engorged, and the teats will be firm to stiff.

Watch for her mucus plug. This is my most reliable sign. If I see an inch or more of mucus hanging out of her butt, I know that we are going to have babies within the next… oh… 10 hours on the outside, but typically more like 6. 🙂

Signs of Early Labor

Not eating her breakfast. Or, not eating hay, if it’s after breakfast.
- If I’m watching a doe through the night on the barn camera, and she’s eating away, I’m thinking she’s not in labor, nor will she be, for the next few hours.
- Generally speaking, does kid on an empty rumen, so they don’t tank up right before delivery.
- Here’s a free tip: LOAD up does who are near to deliveries on hay in the evenings and you may not have as many night time labors.

Standing off by herself in a way not usual for her.
An “inward look.” She’s not alert to her surroundings. She concentrating on what’s going on inside her.

Mucus is visible on her butt, or even a long stream of mucus as in this picture… six to eight inches long, thick and white or yellowish and more transparent. This doe is well into labor.

Generally, the closer to delivery she is, the more liquid or transparent it will be.

Stretching and moving, looking uncomfortable. Some will lie down and then get up several times.
Biting her sides.
She may want to be licking your hands.
Visible contractions: tensing of muscles, while tail extends straight upward.
Her vulva may look convex (pushed out).
She may paw at the ground.

NOTE: You may have all these signs going, and then they will diminish, and the doe may eat and/or drink. It’s normal. She is taking a break. Typically, labor will start up again after a bit.

You should not think of intervening until the doe has been actively pushing for 30 minutes. The early contractions are lining the kids up inside, and the cervix is opening. The doe must feel the pressure of the first kid to be born pressing on her cervix before she will begin to push him out. If you intervene too soon, you will be trying to pull a kid through a tight cervix, and can do real damage.

In these pictures, Candy is not pushing. She is having heavy contractions and stretching so as to line up her kids, but she is silent.

When the doe is well into labor, you’ll want to start brewing the red raspberry leaf tea. This warm drink given after all the kids are delivered will give her an energy boost and also help her uterus to contract and expel the placenta(s) sooner.

Get a 4 quart pot and a colander that will fit into it.

Put the red raspberry leaves (available on Amazon or other providers) into the colander and turn the water on to medium heat.

Allow the leaves to steep, making tea. Set a stopwatch for about 20 minutes.

After the tea is made, turn down the burner to “warm.” (Make sure it doesn’t boil away…)

Get out your molasses and a large serving spoon. Put them nearby.

Right after the doe is done kidding, you’ll stir in a big dollop of molasses and serve the tea warm (but not hot) to the weary momma.

Pushing and Delivery: Normal or Ideal Presentations.

Normally, after a few hours of contractions, the doe will begin pushing. I’ve only had two does who was soundless in this. Most will give prolonged grunts as they bear down; a few will actually give high-pitched screaming at this stage.

Pushing is different from contractions: you can tell that she is bearing down. You can hear it on a barn cam, so I always leave the sound on at night. I’ve had one birth in particular to which I was only alerted through hearing the doe pushing, since it was mid-morning, and she was out of sight behind a manger, and we had no idea since our last barn check that she was in labor.
The dam may push standing up or lying down. Mine almost always lie down, and almost always wedge their butts into the most uncomfortable (for me) location available. This is one good reason for kidding in the open, and not in a tight kidding stall. It gives us humans more room to maneuver around the doe.

Pushing is the stage when you will begin to see the kid. Below are details of what you’ll hope to see and do …

Focus on the dam…

Each normal, live kid is encased in an amniotic sack, filled with fluid. This sack can look white or yellowish, and is translucent. As the kid begins to be pushed out of the doe, you’ll see a “bubble” — it’s the tip end of this sack.
There are two ideal (or normal) presentations: two feet and head first, or two hind feet first. Both of these are “normal” or “ideal” presentations. See these diagrams. (We will discuss abnormal presentations in Part 3.)
If you have a bright light (such as a flashlight or cell phone light) you can look into the bubble, and hope to see two hooves encased in a protective, white casing. Ideally, there’s a nose there, too. Often you can see teeth and a tongue.
Sometimes, the sack will burst as the doe pushes the baby out. This is normal. If it does, and the kid is nose first, you can wipe its face and nose with your towel, as it may start to gasp and breath before it’s fully born, or not.
Typically, after the head and shoulders are out, in a normal delivery, the rest of the kid slides out and onto the floor.
Ideally, you are waiting with a towel (or feed sack) placed right near the scene of the action. You should wipe the kid’s head with a towel first, clearing its nasal passages (carefully — they are delicate) and throat if needed with the bulb aspirator.
After the kid is breathing well, which should be within 30 seconds, put the kid in front of the doe so that she will lick it and smell it.
- This is VERY important. She needs to bond with her baby, and should eagerly lick it. You can assist with drying, but do not get in her way, especially if she’s a first freshener. Such new dams might not know to do this. Present the baby to the doe, and if she’s uncertain, back away and see whether she will start to lick it on her own.
  - If it’s not cold in the barn, you don’t have to assist with drying at all.
In most cases, there will be about 15-20 minutes between kids. It can go longer, or shorter. Sometimes multiple kids can come fast: one after the other. During the interval, it is a great idea to get each kid nursing if possible. (See details below)
Bumping her: If you think the doe may be done delivering kids, you can try a little test to see if there are any kids left inside her. If she is standing up, stand behind her butt and reach around her belly and lace your fingers together. Then pull up on the belly and then let it drop again into your hands. (This is not a big motion, but it is quick. Be gentle, but firm.) If there are kids left, you can typically feel sharp hooves or bony butts bumping against your hands.
When she is finished delivering kids, you will want to give her the red raspberry tea with molasses as an energy boost and to help the uterus contract to expel the placenta(s). (If the tea is too hot, cool it by adding some cold water.) Most of mine gratefully suck down nearly a gallon of the stuff.

Also focus on the Kids…

As each kid is born, it will need to breathe freely first, and then quickly be presented to the dam for cleaning, sniffing, and bonding. Additionally, you need to be concerned with each kid’s temperature and note their sucking reflexes.

Healthy kids will emerge with open eyes and a perfect mouth. They are miracles on hooves, ready to stand and eat within 5-10 minutes of birth.

They will be slick and wet from birth fluids.

As the dam licks them, she is drying and stimulating (and thus warming) them. However, if the barn temperatures are cold… under 40° or so… the wet kid can get chilled.

If your barn is cold, help to dry the kid with a towel and, if the kid is “floppy” — i.e. not attempting to get up to nurse — put your finger in its mouth. If it is cool to the touch, then you need to warm the kid.
- We use a styrofoam cooler and a hair dryer. Put the kid into the cooler; turn the hair dryer on a low but warm setting, and then put a towel over the cooler. Be careful not to burn the kid, but fill the cooler with warm air from the hair dryer. Typically, this only takes 5-10 minutes. If this is the kid’s issue, it will brighten considerably and start looking to nurse your hands and/or to stand up. Take it back to its mother and help it to nurse, as described below.
- As you are helping to dry a healthy kid with a towel, don’t be too gentle. Friction on its skin will stimulate and warm it.

As the kid warms, it should attempt to get on its feet. Because it is using its ligaments and muscles for the first time, it will usually take many tries for the kid to be on his feet, and some only seem to know how to go in “reverse.”
You can assist with this process, maybe by untangling limbs and making sure that the surface under the kid gives him good footing, but also do let the kid struggle to right himself. This is how his muscles strengthen.
IDEALLY, each kid should get some colostrum in him within 30 minutes of being born, the sooner the better. It is vital that the kid be warm, or he will neither seek the teat nor be able to digest the colostrum.

If the kid is warm and active, it will start searching for the dam’s teat. She will nuzzle her dam’s side and bump her head on her dam’s belly (or your hands). She may go the wrong way, nuzzling along the dam’s chest or ear.
If it’s been about 15 minutes and no active pushing is going on, urge the doe to stand so that the firstborn can nurse. (Nursing will stimulate uterine contractions!)
- You can pick the kid up and bring her to the teat. Don’t try pushing her butt or her head towards the teat, as her instinct will be to push back. The kid has eyes; you can put her in front of the teat, and then bend the teat towards her mouth. Her God-given reflex will be to “latch on” and suck vigorously.
- If the kid just “sips” at the teat, that’s OK for a first try, but attempt to get the kid back to the teat in a very short while. You want to see vigorous, prolonged suckling as soon as can be.
Take a break from trying to get kids to nurse if the doe starts to deliver another kid. Make sure that the first one is safe from being sat or stepped on, and then give your attention to the delivery of the next kid.
As soon as you can, dip each kid’s umbilical cord in iodine.

The Clean Out

Typically, after the last kid is born, there will be long, stringy, bloody tissue hanging out of the doe’s vulva.

Do not touch it! Between one and twenty-four hours later, the placenta(s) will emerge on its own.

Most of my does have birthed their placenta(s) within 2-4 hours, but it’s not unsafe in goats for it to take up to five days to deliver placentas, especially if there are birth complications (see Part 3).
Again, NEVER pull on the tissue that is hanging out of the vulva. You want the placenta(s) to disengage naturally.

Did you notice that (s) on the end of “placenta”? Yup. Sometimes there are two.
- A goat’s uterus is pronged: it has two “horns” in which kids can be lodged. In some cases, each of these “horns” can have its own placenta.
  - VERY rarely, you can have a kid or two born, and then a placenta, and then another kid (or two). This has only happened only a few times to me.

Back to Part 1: Getting Ready for Kids

Posted on January 7, 2021January 7, 2021 by Marcia — Leave a comment

Listeriosis and Polio in Goats

I am relatively new to goats. This spring will be our third kidding season. As I reflect back on 2020, two success stories stand out, and I wanted to post about them to give hope to others, and give thanks to God, Who enabled us to bring full healing to two of our kids.

Listeriosis and polio in goats are both deadly diseases, left untreated. They present with nearly identical symptoms, so the typical approach is to treat for both of them simultaneously. Listeriosis can cross to humans, so you need to wash hands after treating sick goats. In case you’ve never had either of these, I’ll briefly define them.

“Listeriosis is caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes and is commonly seen in cooler climates [though our first case was in August]. These bacteria can be found in the soil, food sources, and even the feces of healthy animals. Most commonly, this disease of sheep and goats is observed as a result of feeding moldy or spoiled hay or silage.”

You treat listeriosis with massive amounts of penicillin, given in shots. Because these bacteria cause a neurological disease yielding deadly paralysis, you need to push the bacteria-killing penicillin past the brain/blood barrier to defeat it. Some people give the shots every six hours around the clock. Our vet directed us to give it twice a day, AM/PM.

We didn’t have moldy hay in our barn, but our goats forage daily in a large pasture, so in the humid days of late summer, our 10-week-old kid, Dandy Lion (right), could have gotten it in the field.

Or… he could have had polio. “Polioencephalomalacia (polio) in ruminants is caused by a thiamine deficiency and/or sulfur toxicity. Other causes include improper feeding, feeding too much grain, or anything that disrupts the health and well being of rumen microbes, such as chronic or acute acidosis or indigestion.”

The treatment for polio is to give large doses of Thiamine (a type of vitamin B) injected sub-Q. Polio is relatively easy to cure if caught early, but since both of these diseases present the same, and it’s important to act immediately, we treated Dandy for both simultaneously, under the direction of our vet.

We think that nine-month old Bridget (left) was possibly stressed by being forcibly weaned, and that her stress brought on her susceptibility to her listeriosis/polio battle.

I felt really badly that two of our animals came down with this disease within a few months of each other, and I earnestly asked my vet if my management was at all at fault, and he said “No. These bacterium are everywhere.”

Symptoms and Treatments for Dandy Lion

So, if you’ve never seen it, what are the symptoms of listeriosis/polio?

With Dandy, during morning chores one day, I noticed that my normally bouncy, friendly little buckling was sleepy and listless. He looked punk; he looked “off.” I noted it, thinking it might be coccidia, and moved on.

But, that night on barn cam, he was standing with his head jammed into a crook in the goats’ sleeping benches. When I went up at 2 AM to help him (thinking he was actually stuck) he stumbled away from me as if drunk and dug his head sideways into another corner.

We waited until daybreak, and then contacted mentors and our vet. After gaining an ides of what it was, we started pumping penicillin and thiamine into him.

Since he was young and really bad, we also had to tube feed him. It takes about 4-7 days of treatment fo them to be fully healed, so they need to be hydrated and fed, or the disease will win.

The idea of tube feeding terrified me at first. Our vet talked us through the process by phone, but it was watching YouTube videos that really helped us out.

We found that, in practice, with a 10-week-old kid tube feeding is not hard, especially if the kid is really out of it. If you mistakenly get the tube down the windpipe (which we never did) they cough. If they don’t cough, you’re good!

We ended up tube feeding this little guy four times a day, giving him four ounces of milk each time. It got to be routine, amazingly, and now I can do it easily. But starting it was scary. I’m just writing this to say: YES, you can if you must!

We also made Dandy into a little pin cushion: we gave him 10 ccs of penicillin morning and evening for about five days. I hated it; but again, the alternative was death.

Part of Dandy’s response to his pain was to STAND for three straight days (as in the picture above) with his head jammed in a corner. He would NOT lie down to rest. We tube fed him, isolated him to a small area for his safety, and gave him shots for four to five days (I can’t remember the exact number).

PLEASE NOTE: We isolated Dandy for his safety. You do NOT have to quarantine for these diseases since the bacteria are everywhere. However, we did use gloves and wash hands because Dandy was drooling and listeriosis does cross to humans.

At nights, we put his mom in with him for comfort. She needed to go out during the day to eat, but at nights we put him in with her. He would try to nurse but not be able to suck the teat because his brain had lost that connection. He would need to re-learn it, or not be able to drink, and thus live.

I watched him day and night (on my barn cam) and he never layed down. This worried me. After he’d been on his feet for three days straight, I decided to just FORCE his little body to rest. I sat in this chair for three hours on the fourth day and just let him sleep in my lap. I also did the same that afternoon for more than an hour. He really did seem to get better from that time on, and that night I saw him lie down with his mom.

After about five days of treatment, Dandy was definitely on his feet and moving around normally, but he still couldn’t nurse his mom. This worried me so much! He did start eating hay, but wasn’t nursing. I worried about dehydration.

Finally, on the sixth day, I saw Dandy take a LONG drink from a bucket of water and I dissolved into happy tears. He was old enough to wean from milk and eating hay. If he could drink from a bucket, he would live without tubing.

As it turns out, one of the strengths of the mammalian brain is that it can reroute itself to re-learn tasks that are lost from injury to the brain. So it was with Dandy. We kept him another two weeks beyond what we would normally have before he went to his new home, and in about 10 days, he had figured out how to nurse again! (It was just in time for us to send him home with his new family, and he had been trained to the bottle, so they were able to baby him with milk feedings for another month to help him regain his lost weight.)

Symptoms and Treatment for Bridget

We were so grateful that Dandy was healed through this process, and it gave us confidence when, on November 4, during morning chores, 10-month-old Bridget started the behavior in the video, right (click on the triangle to view the video, and be patient while it loads).

Note the tongue hanging out the left side of her mouth, the slobber, and the rubbing of her mouth on surfaces.

We knew something was badly wrong, and began immediately with the penicillin and thiamine. We contacted our vet, and he agreed on the treatment.

Bridget was much older than Dandy had been, and it was fall, where the foliage was dying down. She was too old for us to safely tube, and she was not as sick as Dandy had been, in terms of behavior. She was walking, eating, and drinking. She just could not put her tongue in, and her cud got caught in her cheek.

In her case, we asked our vet to come out and make sure that it wasn’t a dental issue, or maybe a thorn caught in her cheek or throat. He checked her thoroughly and determined that it was most probably early listeriosis/polio.

Thus, Bridget became our second pincushion for another week or so. She was eating and running with the herd the whole time we were treating her. She had plenty of energy. She never had the twisting of the neck or the dazed “out of it” expression. She laid down with her mom at night, and also ate out of the manger from time to time at night on cam.

The issue with her was that, each morning, in the bedding (and also in the mineral dishes) we found regurgitated cud. LOTS of it. At first I thought it was scours, but then I would see her poop normal, black goat berries, and this “scour” had texture to it and was very green and didn’t smell bad. It finally dawned on us that it was drool! All night long, as Bridget chewed her cud and sought to process her food normally, her mouth paralysis was preventing her from swallowing her cud back down to where her the rest of her digestive system could finish processing it. We worried about her losing weight day by day and bought an animal-size scale.

We started to weigh Bridget and found that she was losing weight. Though her rumin could process 80% of the fatty acids of her feed through its walls (thus, she was not dying quickly), we were thinking that if she became weak or wasted away to pitiful proportions, we would have to put her down. Having fought so hard for her, and having a lot invested in her bloodlines, I was really sad and praying hard for her to be healed. Morning by morning, there were several large piles of cud drool in her bedding, and on her mom’s back from sleeping near each other, and some in those mineral dishes. SIGH. (It was both gross and discouraging.)

Having seen Dandy’s brain reconnect, though, I kept waiting to see if her brain would repair the paralysis damage. But, I also worried that it was taking so long. After six weeks of drooling illness, I was seriously thinking of putting her down, and really depressed about it. At that point, though, Eliya Elmquist really encouraged me that one of her does had taken a LONG time to recover from listeriosis. This gave me peace to wait on the Lord to see what would happen, and to simply give it to Him.

On Christmas morning (almost 8 weeks since she had first sickened), I went up to do morning chores and mucking. I came to Bridget’s bed with a pitchfork, ready to put her drool piles into my muck bucket. There was almost no drool!! Excited, I told Scott about it and waited for the next morning… no drool!!!! I was SO HAPPY and excited. She has been drool-free since Christmas Day.

After a few days of not seeing drool, we weighed Bridget. She had gained 10 pounds in two weeks from her last weigh in! We were SO SO grateful to God for His grace in creating that mammalian brain that had been re-routed to allow Bridget not only to live, but to re-learn how to swallow her cud. Bridget will probably make a full recovery and be bred next fall.

We are thankful, and I hope that this post will encourage you in any battles with listeriosis/polio to hang in there and wait on that amazing mammalian brain if your goat has some lasting after effects.

Posted on February 14, 2020February 15, 2020 by Marcia — Leave a comment

Building Bonding Pens with Creep Gate Option

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.

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!

Posted on October 19, 2019October 19, 2019 by Marcia — Leave a comment

New Barn is Done!

Part 2: Cheese Room and Milking Parlor

As I explained in more detail in Part 1, the ground floor is divided exactly in half. 18′ x 48′ is dedicated to space for the goats. As I explained in a previous post, that space is modular: there are four stall doors to the outside (as you see in the picture above) and four stall doors on the interior ally. We divide the goat stall space using goat/sheep panels that can easily be installed or removed.

On the right of the picture above, you can see mangers built between the doors. If you look closely, you can also see white-painted steel roofing material mounted on the wall. That same steel roofing shows in the picture on the left. It sheathes the milking parlor and cheese making room. These take up about a quarter of the entire barn’s downstairs space.

Cheese Making Room

If you enter that door pictured above, you will be in the cheese making room. It is quite small: 12′ x 8′. It is a one-person space that opens into the milking parlor as well. It is designed as a clean, heated space where one may make cheeses and store goat’s milk.

We will work clockwise around the cheese room, noting features.

First, the door to the barn’s interior has glass so people can watch cheese being made if they stop by, and so that we can communicate easily. The cabinets and counters were found at Lowe’s. The stove was bought off Craig’s List for $50. And the crates that we use here and in the milk parlor were bought on sale for $6 each, delivered free, from Michael’s.

Continuing around, you see the door opened to the milking parlor beyond. Note the door from the milking parlor to the outside (for orientation later). Also note the floor: it is luxury vinyl (not because goats need luxury, but because it is waterproof and has a commercial durability rating. It looks like wood, too, which means it is textured. It’s easy to sweep and wash, which we do twice daily after milking. It is in both the milking parlor and the cheese making room.

Now, if you close that door to the milking parlor above, you see the sink area. The view out the window is of the mountains–so beautiful!

I designed lots of space for keeping oversized pots and pans below in this area, and again, crates replace upper cabinets.

Now, I have pivoted again. You see the jar of milk, and the door we came in by, and I am standing in the milking parlor door.

You can see an empty space where we place our cheese presses, our current small refrigerator (we are looking for a full sized one on Craig’s List now), and our upright freezer that was a Craig’s List find.

Notice the small stool down low on the left…

We love our 8 barn cats, all of whom are feral, and were born in our barns. They are great mousers! But, we have had two problems since acquiring goats. Problem 1) They were always in our old milking parlor–startling or annoying goats while milking and making things unsanitary. Problem 2) When it is zero degrees outside, I am too softhearted to leave them to the elements, so I bring them inside to my bathroom. They make a MESS of it, since they’re not trained to the litter box.

For these two reasons, it was important to me when designing this barn, to solve these problems. The milk room backs up to the staircase, so I decided to create a “cat lair” under the stairs. I had the most interior, low portion partitioned off, and created a cat flap exit into the barn from that space for them to use.

Inside my nice, clean cheese room, next to that stool and near the floor, is the cat feeding flap.

This flap, when opened reveals the cats’ food/water dish that slides out into the room. This way, if we want to give the cats some milk or whey, we can, without them entering this clean space or bothering the goats while milking.

Above the cat flap is the room’s heater, and above that (not pictured) is a switch on the wall that solves the second of my two cat problems: what to do when it’s really cold out. The switch operates and outlet inside the cat lair. I plug a heating pad into it–the kind that doesn’t have an automatic shutoff that we use in our chicken house for MHP brooders–and when it’s cold, we can flip the switch and the pad will be on for cats to pile onto and stay warm. (I will sleep soundly knowing my cats are comfy.)

Milking Parlor

Our milking parlor is designed with cleanliness in mind first and foremost. It is sealed off from the barn and the outside, and insulated top, bottom, and sides. Up in the corner at the end on the right in this picture, you can see a shop heater that keeps the room above freezing.

We have room for four milk stands and two milking machines in this room. We are currently transitioning to from wooden stands that you see pictured here to wood/metal stands that we are making.

Other features to note: we again use crates (painted white so we can see when to clean them, and so that dirt can’t sink into them as readily). The room is (obviously) lined with metal roofing painted white. This is a highly durable finish that we can wipe clean with a rag, and that the goats cannot damage.

Also note the door to the outside. There’s a door to the left (like the cheese room one), which is where the goats enter. They are milked, and exit to the yard (under a roofed overhang) when they are done.

In the foreground of the picture above, note that there is a feed bucket on the right and a black shelf unit on the left. (You’ll see them again in the next picture, where I move to the opposite angle.)

Okay, so now you see the bookshelf units. This is where I get to store all my animal medications that I’ve always had to store in the house in winters (a LONG walk from the animals).

You now also see on the right the door to the interior barn ally where the goats enter this room, and that’s the door back into the cheese room on the left.

Just a few more features to note and then I’m done. The PVC pipe that you see comes through the ceiling of the milking parlor. This is because we store our grain in a caged, mouse resistant (is anything mouse proof???) room. After we mix it up there, rather than carrying it down, we position the grain can under this chute, and pour it down, saving lots of effort.

The grain cans are on rolling plant stands, so during milking, we move them closer to the feed dishes on the goats’ stands.

We are loving the relative peace and cleanliness of our new milking parlor. Our next post will be about how we are upgrading our milk stands to be easier to clean and more sanitary. If you’d like to become part of the Storybook Farm community and receive monthly newsletters, sign up below!

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Posted on October 17, 2019May 15, 2024 by Marcia — Leave a comment

Our New Barn is Done!

Part 1: The Rubber Flooring

Well, we started in the second week of July, and we moved our does into their new space on Saturday evening. They’ve now slept in their space for three nights, and already we’re making tweaks and modifications. But, as my son Mike is fond of saying, “no plan survives first contact.” This post is mostly about the animal part of the barn.

Let me share some pictures of what we now have, and explain as I go what we plan to modify. This is PART 1. If you want to see our milking parlor and cheese making room, click HERE.

NOTE: I do all this in the hopes that some of the ideas that I’ve had will inspire you with ways you can maybe solve problems or improve your own setup. As goatherds, we’re always learning, right?

Below is the floor plan of our barn, just to orient you. This post is about the Goat Space, near the top of the drawing, where we have an 18′ x 50′ open space. This space can be divided or left open as the seasonal needs of our goats dictate (see more on this here).

Choosing, Prepping For, and Installing the Floor

I have had goats on dirt floors, and it’s not my preference. I don’t like how much pee gets into the dirt, and how stinky it gets, and how ruts form that become veritable ponds of pee. So, I opted for a single sheet of rubber roofing that covers the entire goat space: 17′ x 47′. No pee gets thru!

Rubber roofing is WAY cheaper than horse mats. Goats are WAY lighter than horses! So, we opted for the heaviest duty roofing material that we could find. It is only about 1/4″ thick, but it seems to be plenty thick for our little goats (non of whom is more than 120 lbs.).

The first step was moving the roll of rubber roofing. It was NO JOKE. This 50′ x 20′ roll (doubled in half so the roll was 10′ x 50′, weighed at least 800 lbs. I brought it home in a pickup truck from the roofing company, but from there, it took three strong men to muscle it from the truck to the rollers, as you see in the first photo below.

Then, we had to prepare the underlayment. Scott spent about two days doing this. We first raked the entire area with a garden rake, removing stones and carting them off. Then he began to level it with a 2 x 3 board from front to back on the left side (in front of the roll). I meanwhile drove our tractor with 5-6 loads of black sand. We used it to continue to level the area, filling in divots and smooting the area over and over.

Finally, (last picture) we unrolled and (with the help of visiting friends) we all got into those four doorways and PULLED together to properly position the left half of the entire piece.

We then did the same exact process on the right half of the area.

Bring in the Does!

Here is a shot of the does exploring their new space for the first time on Saturday evening (10/12/19). In this first shot, I’m standing on the right side of the space, looking towards the exterior walls.

What you also see here, if you look closely, on the left, is a goat panel divider. More on this later.

In the picture below, I’ve reversed direction to be looking towards the interior of the barn. Same space. Obviously, we have built in mangers and water buckets. There are four doors here as well. They all lead into the center aisle beyond that half wall.

Here again, you see that same goat panel. It is heavy duty, like a calf panel, and it is removable, secured to the walls by means of large eye hooks and carabiners. Obviously, this panel divides the space. We can thus have four “stalls,” using three dividers in all. This proves to be economical and modular, and also keeps the whole space open. This means that we can see everything, and the goats can see one another when we need to separate them.

Pros and Cons on the Flooring

So far, I have things I like and don’t like about this flooring.

What I LOVE is the ease with which it cleans up, and the fact that no pee is seeping into the dirt underneath. Each morning, we feed and milk our does, and kick them out for the day (while the weather stays warm.) I sweep up the pee and goat berries with a straw broom, and then transfer them to my muck bucket by means of a terrific scoop that I bought at Tractor Supply.

What I haven’t loved so much is that the pee pools during the night, so that (without any bedding) the goats lie in berries and pee at night. (Everybody say “yuck”!)

However, each day, the does also drop hay under the manger that stays clean and dry. I’ve found that it’s easy to sprinkle some on the pee puddles, step on it for good measure, and then sweep it into my shovel scoop.

For the most part, my girls choose to sleep in those kiddie pools, especially in winter or, in summer, outside.

NOTE: A year later, we did some terraforming, where we peeled back the rubber and ditched the center of the barn to an outside drain. It took some trial and error, but we love how our floor drains now, and how easy it is to muck.

Read details on this upgrade HERE.

In the summer, a bare floor at night is fine, but we’re also preparing all of our barns for winter now, and so we decided to address two concerns (staying dry and staying warm) with one solution.

Here in the foreground (which is in the second stall), you see the new “bunk” we made. It’s just 2×6’s screwed together and then a tarp over them. I put down a layer of horse pellet bedding, PDZ, and then hay over top. I will use the deep bedding method in this bunk, and the rest of the floor can be dry. So far, it’s working perfectly.

For details on using bunks and pools, click HERE.

To see an even more recent approach, check out or goat table bunks, HERE.

So, that’s it for the floor. I love the large, open, sunny space (the picture right above this is taken at about 10 AM, and you can see the sun pouring in). We allow the does into the first stall during cold or blustery weather so that they can get in out of the wind. The rest of the time, they can choose pasture or hang out on the back porch…

Just hanging out and gossiping on the porch…

Feel free to tour our milking parlor and cheese-making room! And we love to read comments, especially if you’ll share what you do about bedding in your barn, and how you like it!

We also have other posts that detail modifications and additions that we’ve made. I link them here for quick clicking.

Posted on June 29, 2019September 5, 2019 by Marcia — Leave a comment

New Barn Comin’

We are breaking ground on our new barn starting Monday. I am beyond excited. It’s going to be a two-story pole barn: 48’ x 36’, with a 48’ x 12’ shed on one side where we plan to park our tractor and truck.

We are building it inside our existing riding ring, that we excavated years ago for horseback riding. With my age and osteoporosis, I don’t ride much any more. But, if the notion takes me, I can ride around this new barn. Meanwhile, the goats will enjoy a large indoor space, a larger outdoor flat space, an incredible view of the mountains, and 30 acres of fields, brush, woods, and terrain. What’s not to love?

In these first pictures in this post are mostly of stuff you’ll never notice when the building is done: my contractor’s copy of our floor plan above, the excavating that we did to make the site level for building (also above), the improvements to the road up to the ring that we had to make so delivery trucks can make it to the site (that’s what all the slate is for), below.

MORE shale, heading up past our chicken coops to the building site above.

And last (but not least) a picture of a very hot husband who was trying to get a cool drink on a break from putting up temporary fencing to keep the animals out of the construction zone for the summer… but somebody got to his pitcher of water as he was telling me about his progress!

After all the prep work, it was early July when the lumber arrived and things starting looking like there really was a new barn coming! The following pictures summarize the construction, but don’t capture our gratitude for all the skill, craftsmanship, and sweat put in by Chris Lambert.