Stall bedding for goats?

[Pocket_Pony]

Currently the goats are in the pasture. They have a shed with stall mats and lots of round spools all around that they like to climb and sleep on.

Come winter, I’ll bring them up to the barn. They’ll have access to a different pasture, but their way to get out of the elements and to get water will be via stall access (their usual pasture does not have water so I have to haul water in there).

What is better goat bedding - straw or shavings? I don’t bed the horse stalls now because they don’t hang out in there much. Who knows, the goats may not hang out in their stalls much, either. I will put spools in there for them to stand and nap on, and then more spools in the dry-lot area.

Since their poops are so little, it isn’t like I can clean their stalls daily, I’ll just have to strip the stall every once in a while.

Thoughts?

[clanter]

gee I just though goats stayed on top of the car or the new truck never really though about putting them in stall

[Simkie]

I use pelleted bedding, 100% expanded, for my chickens and clean up the chicken poop every day. You could try the same thing with your goats, if you wanted to clean it daily. Water it down to fluff up all the pellets and turn it into sawdust, then cover a manure fork with an appropriately small hardware mesh and use it to sift out the little poop pellets. I usually wet the bedding down a day or two before I need to use it to allow some of the “extra” water to evaporate out and strip the coop every month. A single bag is all it takes.

I find it works really well (although we haven’t been through a winter yet–we’ll see how watering down the bedding goes when it’s below freezing) and I like being able to remove the poop every day, like I do for the horses and for the cats. You could also just use sawdust, if you could find a source.

[KLeaphart]

I will also be using pellets this year. I have used straw in the past for the goat’s house and I hated it. It’s a pain to clean out, is itchy, and to me just looks messy.

[poltroon]

They’ll eat the straw. Shavings will work, and a lot of people like the pelleted bedding too.

[Calvincrowe]

My friend who has raised award winning Alpines for decades uses straw or hay. She uses a deep litter method in her big shed, cleaning monthly. She sometimes starts with shavings on the bottom then a layer of straw. Adds straw to cover a few times a week or so. Builds a nice comfy bed, stays clean and she mucks and starts over.

[Foxtrot_s]

We have used deep litter for bedding our sheep. People love it or hate it - there re threads on this. I loved the deep litter - it was warm and absorbent, comfy to sleep on, but needs a big clean out in the Spring. We had success with peat moss - just amazing how much wet it soaks up but it never smelled. Wonderful for the garden tho. Some said they did not like the tracking of the peat in the barn, or that it was dusty - but we kept ours sprayed with water when we added new…
it is a technique you do not have to work hard on, but need to know the system. No waste.

[Pocket_Pony]

@Calvincrowe

My friend who has raised award winning Alpines for decades uses straw or hay. She uses a deep litter method in her big shed, cleaning monthly. She sometimes starts with shavings on the bottom then a layer of straw. Adds straw to cover a few times a week or so. Builds a nice comfy bed, stays clean and she mucks and starts over.

Is your friend in Oregon, perhaps, and a veterinarian? If so that’s probably who we got our goats from! They are Alpines (two of them anyway, the older adult is Alpine x Saanen).

If you use straw and feed hay, do they end up either eating the straw and/or peeing on the hay? Does one feed hay out of hay nets to goats? Right now they are on 100% pasture plus some timothy pellets just for fun and to mix with minerals and treats. When the snow comes there will be no pasture…

[4LeafCloverFarm]

When I had my two big Brush goats, Thelma and Louise, I used regular horse shavings. Back in 2005 when we got them, everybody looked at me a bit sideways when I asked for a manure fork for goat poop. LOL So, I improvised.

I found a manure fork with tines really close together and used that for pee (now don’t laugh) and I got the biggest kitty littler scooper I could find. I’d sift the shavings with the manure fork, which just lets the poo through and pile the shavings up on one side of the stall, then sweep up the poo with a broom, and finally scoop the pile of poop up with the kitty litter scooper. It later occurred to me (duh!) that I could simply designate a dust pan in the barn for this task and abandoned the cat scooper. Of course, this method just won’t do if you have a whole herd of goats!

They now make a “mini” manure fork that might work too (though I’m not sure if it’s “mini” because its for miniature horses or simply that’s it’s a scaled down model). The manure fork I used was all metal, and the tines were very close together (the shavings wouldn’t go through the tines with a light toss/shake), but the poop did.

Have fun with your goats! They are such a joy.

[moving_to_dc]

We use straw for our kidding pens, as it seems to absorb urine the best. Goats seem to put out an amazing amount of urine… Cleaning the straw isn’t difficult if you have a flat matted surface. Not so much fun on dirt, though. For the show goats, we use mini-flake or sawdust. Not shavings. Again, the pee issue. Shavings don’t absorb well, and just seem to move away leaving the goats laying in a puddle of urine. The sawdust stays put, and the goats are able to lay on top, above the pee.

I do pick urine spots as needed, but never waste time chasing down turds.

Every hay net I have tried with goats has been a disaster. They love to eat the nets, and get tangled in them - even slow feed nets. Goats like to stand on their back legs to eat hay, and their legs go thru the nets and get tangled. Same with horns. I use wall mounted “goat” hay feeders made out of 4x4 panels. Ours are made locally by a Mennonite family, but you can find similar at Premier 1 Supplies or Slydell. DO NOT use “horse” hay racks with the vertical bars - I have seen goats that have gotten their heads stuck and hung themselves. With some items, it is best to use “goat” products and NOT try to make a horse product work.

[Calvincrowe]

Pocket-- No, she’s in my hometown so not your vet, though she is a vet tech/wildlife rehabber. She’s slowly getting out of breeding, so not on the show circuit any more. Her goats don’t eat straw because they’ve got hay in the feeders all the time and have lots of pasture. But…rain…so much rain here, so her goats spend a lot of time in barn. She does have a concrete and mats under her straw bedding. Her hay feeders are hand built and safe for goats–like Moving to DC said, goats get themselves into all sorts of places they shouldn’t.

I miss goats…I would love to have them again, but not enough space with horses on our small farmette.

[JoannaHCR]

Our goats seem to like stray, with 1-2 straw bales inside their stall to sleep on top of. I feed ours out of a SmartPak slow feed hay bag, it has worked really well. I make a little bed area with extra fluffy straw, and the straw bales, then leave the rest of the stall more bare. I can’t tell if they actually poop less or more in the fluffy area. We just clean the goat stall once a month or so, but ours aren’t ever locked in all the time. Hope you enjoy your goats! Ours are a huge pain in my rear, but I just adore them.

[Mukluk]

Shoring up the goat house for winter. Two goats, I will be putting straw bales around exterior of pen to blog wind (tarp over that. For bedding I guess I am just going to use straw. I think they are pretty hardy- except they don’t like rain. They literally but heads all the time. Must be a goat thing!

[horsenut_8700]

I am currently using pellets bedding (not wet down) and shavings with success. It’s a 9 x12 stall and I use 4 bags of pellets with one bag of fine shavings. Wet spots are cleaned daily and I replace bedding every 10-14 days.

[Pocket_Pony]

Thanks! Maybe I’ll go whole hog and do pellets, shaving, AND straw! Their coats are getting nice and thick. They seem perfectly happy in the pasture for now - last time it rained they went into their shed, but otherwise they don’t really do that. Once we get serious freezes, though, I’ll bring them up to the barn so I can have warm water that I don’t have to haul to their pasture only to have it freeze.

Goats are super fun!

[LovieBird]

My goat seems to like both. He loves to lie on a big pile of fresh, clean shavings. We have also caught him sleeping on a round bale like a baby goat Jesus in a manger!

Goat figure.