When we moved to the new farm, I was able to build my dream barn.  I thought I’d share some of the features we built into the barn to make our lives easier.

The exterior of the barn is all metal and away from the trees so it shouldn’t be damaged by falling limbs. There are five main sections to the goat barn.

1. The Milking Room.  The milk room has a concrete floor with a drain (remember when the boys didn’t clean it out and oats were growing?), and metal walls and ceiling so everything can be hosed off.  It is climate controlled so the boys can milk in a comfortable temperature.  There are 5 milk stands so the boys can milk several goats at a time.

There are two separate doors to outside.  These open into two separate fenced in pens.  The goats come in from one pen and then go out another door to the other pen.  The goats do know which door is which and don’t try to leave by the wrong door.

In the milking room we also have a washer and dryer for dealing with all the barn towels.

2. The Milk Processing Room.  Adjacent to the milking room is where we process the milk.  There are two sinks, an ice maker, a refrigerator, and counter space.  There is also a small bathroom.  This is where the milking equipment gets washed and where the milk gets bottled.  We also use the ice maker quite often because we chill the milk that we drink in an ice water bath.  We do not need to chill the milk that goes into the soap.

The boys are the ones who use the barn the most, so notice the seat is up! LOL

3. The Feed Room.  You enter the feed room through a garage door. This area has the stairs to the hay loft and a door that enters into the stall area.  We have automatic door closers on these doors, plus the doors open INTO the barn stall area.  This way, if the goats get out of their stalls, they can not push the feed room doors open.  This is important because over-eating can cause the goats to become dangerously sick.

4. The Hayloft.  I think this is the children’s favorite place in the barn.  They spend hours up here making hay forts and playing.  There are trap doors in the floor that lead down to the individual stalls.  Hay can be dropped down directly into the hay mangers.  We left the trap doors open so you can see them in the photos, but they always stay closed.

These two photos are looking down through the trap doors into the stalls below.

5. The Goat Stalls.  We have 4 main stalls in the goat barn.  Each stall opens into its own outside pen which is then opened into the woods. Each stall can be subdivided during kidding season into smaller pens if we need them. We have a bridge system so the goats can go from one pen, into the main barn aisle, and then over into the other pen.  This allows the goats a little more room with a wall down the middle to provide some separation in case anybody is grouchy.

We have heated, automatic waterers which are worth their weight in gold because I never have to worry about the goats not having access to water.

The hay mangers have small openings so the goats don’t waste a lot of hay.

Plus, the cats love to hangout in the hay mangers and keep an eye on things.

The aisles are large enough for really large wheel barrows.  The doors into the pens are hinged on both sides so they can swing open either way.

Each pen has two 50 pound dog feeders to hold either alfalfa pellets or oats or both.  They can be filled from the aisle.  In fact, everything can be filled from the aisle while the goats can access it from the stall. There are also two buckets for minerals.

The stalls are nice and roomy so the goats can pile up on each other or spread out depending on their mood.

The big stall on the end is where the baby goats stay.

Their pen has different (more expensive) fencing so the babies can’t fit through the holes.

I hope that gives you an idea of our barn.  We absolutely love it.  

We learned a lot from our first barn and we tried to set this one up to fix all of those problems.  So far it has been amazing!