stef makes.art creative projects by stephanie paulantis

A Holding Pen for Goats

June 10, 2013

I just wanted to share this little project I managed to snag some pics of my sweetie working on the other day.

Goat House

What is it you ask? It is a goat house. Obviously.

We recently ran into some friends who had talked about wanting to have some goats around in the past to eat the excess blackberries & other plants around their property. We’ve semi-jokingly talked about different places we could put the goats around town to fatten them up without having to take them on their twice daily walks down the street to the empty lot where we let them feed now, but we knew we couldn’t leave them anywhere for the same reason we can’t just leave them down the street- they wouldn’t be safe. Stray dogs, stray raccoons, stray people… all kinds of threats to small, defenseless, and probably too friendly for their own good goaties. However, when the opportunity to put them on private property owned by people we know and trust came up, where they’d be looked after on a daily basis,we knew it was a great opportunity.

We have a pretty good setup here in town for goats, our housemate David has a whole pen set up for his pygmies and chickens and we had recently transferred our goats from their nursing pen by the vardo into there. They have a roomy shack they sleep here, but they’d need some shelter during summer camp so Jason whipped this bad boy up out of wood he got from the dump. It’s just a small shelter for them to get out of the sun/rain, and to keep them protected at night from stray critters. The rest of the time they get to browse freely either in a fenced in area or on leads. These goats are pretty spoiled little guys, I have to say.

Goat House Goat House Goat House Goat House

I am forever impressed by what Jason is able to pull off in an afternoon with recycled and scrap materials. He can certainly do some much nicer, finished work (I mean have you seen our house?) but it is definitely handy when one needs a project done quick and on the cheap and he can make it happen straight away, have it incredibly sturdy, and have it still look nice. If I tried to do something like make a goat shelter, I can tell you it would be faaaaar jankier than anything like this.