winter bedding – Storybook Farm

In an earlier post, I described the rubber flooring that we chose to put down in our new goat barn. We love, love, love this flooring for so many reasons (sanitation, easy to clean daily, etc.) but one problem we had for winter was that rubber on earth is cold. Almost all barn floors need some augmentation in winter for goats, so that they’ll stay warm and dry. We had a large area, and bedding is expensive, so we hit upon a compromise that is working great for us, and I decided this was the time to share.

Pictured at the right, you can see an assortment of $3 kiddie swimming pools that are 5’ in diameter, and two rectangular bunks in the far double bay. The one at the extreme end was just mucked last week. The one closer to the camera is getting too full and needs mucked soon. (It’s been about 9 weeks since I mucked it.)

These offer sleeping accommodations to 13 does. This post shows and tells how I make (and maintain) these pools and bunks.

Steps to Construction

Step 1: For a pool, buy a kiddie pool (they go on sale for a song in the fall, but they’re never expensive).

For a bunk, buy some untreated 2x6s. The bunk pictured here is 4’ X 4’. The ones in the picture above are 4’ X 10’.

You will also need one tarp per bunk that is oversized for the bunk size you want to create.

Step 2 for the bunk is to screw together your 2x6s to make a square. Then unwrap your tarp.

Step 3 for a bunk: Drape the tarp over the frame, and then wrap the excess around the frame. Make sure to push the tarp down so that you can fill it and the weight of the fill won’t break the tarp, or cause it to become unwrapped from the frame.

Step 4: (For either pool or bunk) put down a thin layer of equine horse bedding pellets. These are super absorbent. They will hold a lot of urine before it will start to puddle at all.

Step 5: Add some PDZ powder to your pellets. (Word to the wise: do all this with no goats watching. They think that the pellets and PDZ are feed!)

The purpose for the PDZ is to counteract ammonia odors (which are unhealthy for the animals to breathe) for as long as possible. I buy mine at Tractor Supply Co.

Now you are ready for the initial bedding layer. What you want to use is hay that is full of sticks—the kind you would’t buy for your goats. (Some people use straw.)

The idea is that you want urine to trickle down through it. I was able to buy large round bales locally for $35/bale, and a bale lasts over a month for all my bunks and pools combined.

When you put in your first layer of hay or straw, just make it about 3-5” thick; nowhere near the top edge of the bunk or pool.

The goats will lie in it, crushing it down, peeing and pooing. Each day, sprinkle just the lightest layer of loose hay (or straw) over the poo and pee stains. You really do not need much.

Again, the goats will come and lay on it, mashing it down. At first, the goats will stay dry because the loose layer of hay (or straw) will separate them from the horse pellet bedding that will absorb urine like a sponge. By the time the pellets are saturated, you’ll have been sprinkling new layers of hay for a week or more.

Benefits of Pools and Bunks

In case you haven’t recognized it yet, this process of bedding the bunks (or pools) is called “deep bedding.” There are a couple of major benefits to deep bedding.

First, in winter you don’t have to muck often. I dump the pools about every two weeks or so (and I could go longer, but they get heavy with congealed pee). I muck the bunks only every two months, and again, I could go longer but they get high and the goats start to stand on them to reach things I don’t want them to, so I empty them and start over.

Second, because the urine travels down through the loose hay and because I layer it each day, my does stay dry and clean, which in winter translates to warm and clean.

Third, the combination of pee, poo, and hay actually makes heat! Basically, these elements create a chemical reaction akin to composting. This adds to the animals’ overall comfort, and actually helps heat the barn overall.

Mucking the bunks is relatively easy. Let’s say that the bunk has gotten about 8”-10” high. I take a pitchfork to it on a relatively warm day, and can fork down about 8” before I hit the heavy, brown layer of congealed pee plus hay. Thus, I strip the entire bunk of the top 8” and then get some help to simply drag the tarp filled with the heavy stuff out the stall door. (In our case, we are spreading it nearby; if I was hauling it far, I’d use a wheelbarrow for the bottom layer, too.

If the day is nice enough, I spread the tarp in the sun to dry, and then finish the job later in the day. I sweep off all the dried bits of horse pellets, bring the tarp back to the bunk frame, and re-bed it as described above.

My goats love this system. Some choose to sleep in the bunks, and some choose individual pools. Occasionally, when scanning the barn late at night by barn cam, I see funny things like this picture.

This is Buttercup with her three almost-adult, 10-month old doelings, all snuggled up together in one 5’ kiddie pool!

Note that the girls do not pee and poo in just the pools or bunks. If you look at this picture closely, you can see that they also litter the rubber flooring. But, that’s a matter of 20 minutes’ work each morning to sweep up the berries, urine, and scattered hay with a broom into a muck bucket. Easy peasy, and I love how fresh smelling everything stays.

I am thinking that in summer I’ll be taking out all the pools and bunks and allowing them to either sleep inside or outside on ground with scattered hay. They won’t need the warmth then, and it’ll be less work for me.

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.

Tag: winter bedding

Goat Bunks and Pools