Goat pen project

Ah the dead of winter. Isn't it great? It's only the end of January and I'm already so ready for spring. I told myself I'd be better about winter this year, try to enjoy it more... but I'm done now.

We have 1 month to go until goat time, so we've started working on their living quarters. I had so many different ideas in my head, but most cost a fortune. A cute free standing white goat house with a beautiful fence in the side field is what I envisioned. But... I decided to go for the "use what we had" approach, since I find it brings me great pleasure to be as cheap as possible.

We have an open shed already, so instead of my original plan, I decided to utilize that.

The side with the chairs faces our house, and the mostly empty side faces our back hay field. I wanted to be able to see the goats from the house so naturally figured their little area would be on the front side. Eric preferred them to be on the back side so you couldn't see them, haha! After much discussion we came up with a compromise.

We already had these gates in the shed, and our friend gave us the welded wire. This was a really simple..and cheap..solution to making an open shed work for goats. I was on cloud 9 about this since it cost us nothing, until I started thinking about coyotes. I needed a place to lock them in at night. That's where my husband and father in law, Jim stepped in.

We had a section of wood boards that the previous owners had cut from the middle of the shed, to make an open walkway from the front to the back. Jim saw it and instantly had the idea to use it to start building a wall for a "nighttime pen".

The wood section is on the left, it fit perfectly! Obviously we still needed more boards to finish the job, so off they went down the road to buy some rough cut lumber from a guy they know. I think he charged them 50 bucks.. much cheaper than any store I know.

After finishing out the side wall, Eric framed up a door that was hung with hinges that Jim brought over. They added a latch and that's all she wrote.

It's perfect! I really couldn't be happier. We will cut a goat door between the two sides, and just lock them in at night. No coyotes will be getting in there! We will also cut a goat door in the nighttime pen, that will lead to a fenced in outdoor area.

So far this project has only cost us 50 dollars, and a days worth of work..pretty awesome!

Thanks for stopping by!