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OK. With two feet of snow on the ground, and the possibility of 3 - 6 inches more on Monday, it’s quite apparent that building a goat barn isn’t going to happen as quickly as I’d hoped. I’d be fibbing if I said that doesn’t bother me. I think about Mirrie, Hope, and Chance every single day and I do wish they were here.

Even though we can’t work on building the goat barn, I’ve been looking into the best feed/water configurations. So, for those of you who have goats, would you please do me a favor and tell me your thoughts on some of this? I’m mainly concerned about the water, feed, and hay I provide inside the goat barn. The barn will be 20 feet long, and 8 feet wide, divided like this - 5X8 stall, 8X8 main portion for goats, and an 7X8 area for milking/doctoring and hay/feed storage.

For the hay, Bernie planned to build a manger. But I found some wall mounted hay racks that look as though they help reduce waste, and that won’t take up as much space. With three goats, I figure a corner mount and wall mount may be sufficient? What do you think? This is what the wall mount looks like. Would two (corner and wall) be adequate for daily hay inside the goat barn? Or do you think we should just go with a large manger that Bernie builds? The goat barn isn’t going to be extremely large, so I’m hoping to save space where I can - but if those wall/corner mangers aren’t adequate, we’ll figure out something else.

How do you secure water inside so the goats can’t knock it over? I found these wall mounts that look great, but there are several different types. These are also used for feed. What do you do for securing feed and water? This page shows several - do you use any of these, or do you recommend another method?

Kendra, from New Life on a Homestead provided a link to the Fias Co Farm website, where I found detailed plans for building a milk stand. Milking may be quite a while in our future, but I can see that using a milk stand to secure a goat while caring for her may be a necessity long before then. And this is something I may be able to work on in the coming days to make me feel like I’m at least moving a little bit forward!

If any of you goat parents can offer some advice here, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

If you regularly follow this blog, you know I’ve posted several time about Angie’s blog. Angie is nothing but awesome. She raises chickens, turkeys, goats, and heaven only knows what else. And she’s FULL of knowledge about how to raise them. I’ve learned so much from her. She’s also taught me to make grocery bags out of 50 pound bird seed bags, how to make homemade yogurt, how to….. well how to do many, many things. She’s also a moderator on backyardchickens and I have nothing but respect for her. She also happens to live a couple of hours from me.

Being the Angie Fan that I am, I also follow her on Facebook. And today she posted that two of her goats had kidded six babies. Three of them passed away But three of them are alive and, thanks to Angie’s most excellent care, are doing quite well.

I need to explain “excellent” care here. Angie brought these three babies into her home and sat with them next to the fire. She put pampers on them (YES - pampers) and they are living in her home. She and her family hold these babies and wrap them in blankets that they rotate in and out of the dryer to make sure they are warm. They fedd these baby goats with bottles filled with the goat mama’s milk. Angie’s teenage daughters sleep in the room with these precious babies and set their cell phone alarms to go off every two hours so they can awaken and feed these babies. There are many, many days of goats living in the house for Angie and her family. And do you know what? Angie doesn’t care. She’s such a good goat mommy. These babies will be sleeping in laps and wearing pampers for quite a few more days. Or weeks. Maybe just 4 more weeks……

Angie knows how badly I’ve wanted goats…. really, really, really wanted goats……. We talked last fall and she had some ready for me to take. But Bernie and I were not ready. We didn’t have shelter for the goats. And we didn’t have a fenced in area for them. Angie said “No worries”. She knew there would be future goat babies, and I knew Bernie would build me a goat shelter in the spring.

But then these babies came. Early in the year. When we still had no shelter. And Angie taunted me with them. She posted pictures for heaven’s sake! *gasp* And I knew…. I just knew….. and after a day of “discussing” it with Bernie, he agreed. He’ll need one month to build a proper shelter, but after one month, I can bring these precious goat babies home! Yay! But shhhhhhh, don’t tell Bernie…… I’m hoping it won’t be a full month……shhhhhh……

So, without further ado, meet Mirrie:

And Chance and Hope:

The white baby is Chance, and the fawn colored baby is Hope.

There is a really precious story behind each of their names. And I will share it later.

But right now, please be happy for me. I am excited beyond words. And I am so very, very happy that three little goats from Angie’s farm will be coming to live with us on the homestead.

This homestead is growing. And I am smiling. Really, really, really smiling.