5 reasons to have and not to have baby goats in the winter
We started our goat ranch with the arrival of 4 goat kids in the month of January a few years ago.
We knew it was not the ideal time of year to get baby goats - they cannot be outside in the cold, but we were eager to get started, and we were READY! (Turns out we were not or we would have had a heated barn.)
Below are 5 reasons you SHOULD have baby goats (kids) in your mudroom in winter!
THE BOND When the babies are inside your home, the bond you create with them is very strong. You bottle feed baby goats if you want them to be loving and friendly, and for our permanent herd, this is important to us. Kids need to be bottle fed for two months, so we decided it would be fine to keep the littles in a pen in our laundry/mud room.
THE SOUNDS The adorable sounds during a lousy winter season, hearing the adorable sounds of babies bleating warms your heart. When they are little (like the first four weeks,) they make tiny, quiet, and really adorable bleating sounds. They are not too vocal, they sleep a lot, and when they are not sleeping they just want to play with you and jump all over you. It is so much fun and so cute!
THE PLAY Until they are weaned, they need “mama” nearby. When they are in the house, someone is constantly walking by and stopping to play with them. They never feel scared or lonely, and you end up spending WAY more time with them than you would if they were out in a heated barn. Baby goats are naturally suckling from mama until she weans them at around 8 weeks. It is important during this time that babies feel secure and loved!
THE SAFETY You don’t have to worry about predators or about them escaping through the tiniest space in the fence if they are not out in the yard when they are so small. Even when it is very warm outside, we have our kids in a very protected pen in the goat yard. It still requires us to keep a very close eye on them during the day (meaning a LOT of visits to the barn) to lock them in at night, and the let them out again at first light. They also really don’t like to be without you when they are little, so expect them to cry a lot if you leave them alone.
THE CONVENIENCE It is nice to have them so close and convenient when they are newborns and require feeding every 6 hours. The beginning weeks of bottle feeding are intense. They may not take to the bottle right away, they need to be fed frequently because their bellies are small, and it takes awhile for the prep, feeding and cleaning – especially if you have more than two kids. It’s much nicer to have the kitchen in the next room, and the goats just downstairs when you are waking at night to feed them! Sure beats heating up formula and trudging to the barn four times a day at odd hours.
7 PM to 7AM…
AND NOW! 5 reasons NOT to have baby goats in your mudroom in mid-winter.
The NOISE When it is freezing cold out, they simply cannot go outside. A newborn goat cannot stand temperatures under 55 degrees, so they are stuck in your house 24/7. After the first few weeks, when a goat cannot go outside to play, it will get bored, and LOUD! Its difficult to entertain a baby goat indoors. We had quite a few people on hand throughout the day, so we would take turns sitting with them and playing with them. This isn’t an option for everyone, but necessary if there is no yard for them to run and play in.
THE MESS When goats are about a month old, they start to get very messy! The above photo on the left was taken at 7pm at night and on the right at 7am the following morning! We cleaned their pen about every 3 hours – that’s 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm 7pm… the pen had a moving pad under the walls, and a second moving pad on top of the first and inside the pen. This way if any pee got through the pads, which happened a lot, we had two layers to protect the waterproof laminate flooring underneath. We didn’t want any possibility that once the goats move outside, our laundry room would smell like goat pee. That’s a lot of cleaning, a lot of blanket washing, and a lot of pee pads. (7 extra large pads, 5 times a day = 245 pee pads a week!)
THE SMELL Goats poop and pee a lot. We put many layers down to protect the floor, and I washed the blankets every day. Unfortunately, the smell doesn’t quite go away when you do the wash, so even the clean blankets had some off gassing. And even better, it does linger in your washer and dryer, and ultimately - unless you run cleaning cycles in between your loads - your clothes and linens may end up with a faint odeur de goat… This, on top of the just constant smell emanating from that room in the house, and by about week 4, you can’t smell it anymore – but everyone else will!
THE WASTE I washed about a load a day of goat blankets when we’ve had kids in the house. We used 35 pee pads a day – equal to about a kitchen size bag of trash every other day. They spill their water, they pee on their hay, they poop in their pellets. They are wasteful animals in general, and indoors is definitely no exception!
THEY WILL ESCAPE When they reach about 5 weeks, they can jump pretty high. Our started to scale the 4 foot walls of our pen around that time. We have a Dutch-door that closes our laundry room from our kitchen, and they started to jump that as well. So frequently, someone would forget to close the doors, and we’d end up with goats in our kitchen – they immediately go for the houseplants, and pee on the dog bed, and since they have no control of their bowels, we ended up with goat pellets in places we really don’t want them.
So, would we do it again knowing what we know now?! ABSOLUTELY - for our first time. It was an awesome experience that I would not take back. Would I do it now? Nope! LOL. But now we have a heated kidding barn and separate pens for all stages of our process here. And a few more goats than we started with.
