So, three excellent goat husbandry books later, I was as sure as I could be that I had a good idea of the requirements of a palace for horse and goat. Fencing would be mesh from ground to top, eliminating the possibility of danger from coyotes and dogs., as well as goat escape. A board across and eventually a hotwire on top of that. My three-sided turnout shed would be very roomy, both big enough to accomodate an extra horse (you never know), to be converted into a hospital stall should the need arise, and certainly adequate for a horse and goat to both have their own space. I decided on 12x20 for that, south-facing. A virtual Graceland for Willow! Goats love to climb on stuff, and fortunately our land is plumb littered with boulders. Everywhere. You want to build a shop? Sorry, you'll have to move it 4 feet to accomodate the boulder that surfaces, too large to be dug out. A barnlet? Same situation. So we just had the contractors roll one of the large rocks that they'd had to move for the fence anyway out into the center of the pasture. A thermal waterer like I'd always wanted. Finally, we had wire welded securely onto both gates and had them hung as close as humanly possible to their posts and the ground. The only advice I wound up not taking was to build a raised 'goat bed'. It was in all my original plans, to be in the most protected area of the shed, three feet off the ground in a generous triangle with the bottom closed off to prevent snakes from making their home there. I figured the contractor would put it in last, but inexplicably, he didn't put it in at all. Faced with having to get him back out to fix it, which I knew could take weeks due to his schedule, and seeing if it was really necessary, I chose the latter. I also knew it would cost more, and we'd already gone WAY over budget. I'm glad I did it that way, because I can't see that the goats miss it at all. I guess they've been bedding down on the straw of stables for centuries quite happily.
Here's how everything turned out:
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| Fence, gates and shed. |
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| Goat rock |
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| Thermal waterer |
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