{"id":2901,"date":"2012-10-02T12:11:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T12:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/bharry\/2012\/10\/02\/building-a-goat-barn\/"},"modified":"2024-04-25T07:14:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T14:14:07","slug":"building-a-goat-barn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/building-a-goat-barn\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a goat barn"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a long time since my last farm post.\u00a0 As I\u2019m just wrapping up a major project, I figure now is a good time to provide an update.\u00a0 When we first bought the farm, we thought our primary activity was going to be goats.\u00a0 After doing some research on difficulty of raising goats, market for goats, etc we decided to go with cattle \u2013 they are WAY easier than goats.\u00a0 However, we knew that we still wanted to try goats some day.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year (Jan?), my wife took the dive and bought a pregnant dairy goat.\u00a0 She had 2 kids.\u00a0 Kim milked the mother goat for several months and then ultimate sold her due to an udder defect that was going to cause problems.\u00a0 Now she keeps a friend\u2019s yard free of weeds \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately our goal is to have a dozen or two goats \u2013 mostly meat goats.\u00a0 Having started down the path with a couple of goats, it triggered the need to start thinking about how we were going to keep the goats.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the two goats we have now and our two livestock guardian dogs.\u00a0 The goats are Sandstone and Sapphire and the dogs are Achilles and Artemis.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

I did a bunch of research\u2026\u00a0 The first issue is the fence.\u00a0 Goats are notoriously hard on fences \u2013 escape all the time, break them, etc.\u00a0 A friend of mine said \u201cif water can\u2019t get under it and a giraffe can\u2019t get over it, it will hold goats\u201d.\u00a0 So last winter, I fenced in about 3-4 acres with a pretty heavy duty fence \u2013 posts every 12 feet, woven wire and high tensile electrical to keep the goats off the fence.\u00a0 That was a big project \u2013 a lot of posts.\u00a0 Plus I hit rock along one stretch of about 12 posts that required me to break up about 12 inches of rock in each post hole.\u00a0 I think each of those holes took me about an hour.<\/p>\n

The second issue is housing.\u00a0 Goats require shelter.\u00a0 I need a place to keep feed and hay, etc.\u00a0 A couple of months ago, I finally started getting started on housing.\u00a0 All told it took about 15 days of work (spread over a couple of months) to build \u2013 yes, I know I over engineered it but I\u2019m an engineer at heart. \"Image<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0It took 2 days just to set the 18 posts and get them all reasonably aligned.<\/p>\n

I took some pictures of the project as it progressed.\u00a0 I\u2019d have like to have taken a picture at the end of every day that I worked to show a nice time lapse, but I just didn\u2019t remember to do it.<\/p>\n

The first picture is about 3 days into it.\u00a0 That\u2019s me leaning over and cutting the board, my son in the green shirt and a friend who helped me for a couple of days.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the nearly finished barn.\u00a0 The only things missing are the hay rack I built along the back wall this weekend and the paint which is currently in progress.\u00a0 The barn is about 16 feet deep and 40 feet long.\u00a0 It should house up to about 30 goats (if I ever get that many).<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

One part of building this has been a real experience.\u00a0 If you look in the first picture you can actually see the new barn in the background.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually in the same field as the goats \u2013 so I had help building the barn.\u00a0 Help knocking down boards; help getting manure all over my material; help eating nails and screws; help chewing on boards while I was trying to cut them; help climbing on top of roof tin while it was on saw horses and folding it in half \u2013 you know goat help.\u00a0 Goats are very cool, curious and friendly animals but I\u2019ve learned that trying to build anything in the field with them is an exercise in futility.\u00a0 I eventually had to take them up to our main barn and put them in a stall because it was just too difficult to continue with them \u201chelping\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I think I bought a farm just so I have a good excuse to build stuff \"Image<\/a>\u00a0 It\u2019s been fun but I actually am looking forward to getting some more goats.\u00a0 Despite the helping, they are cool animals.\u00a0 That should happen early next spring.<\/p>\n

Until then, enjoy!<\/p>\n

Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a long time since my last farm post.\u00a0 As I\u2019m just wrapping up a major project, I figure now is a good time to provide an update.\u00a0 When we first bought the farm, we thought our primary activity was going to be goats.\u00a0 After doing some research on difficulty of raising goats, market […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-personal"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

It\u2019s been a long time since my last farm post.\u00a0 As I\u2019m just wrapping up a major project, I figure now is a good time to provide an update.\u00a0 When we first bought the farm, we thought our primary activity was going to be goats.\u00a0 After doing some research on difficulty of raising goats, market […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}