How to Take Care of a Baby Goat as a Pet

I am a total-time homesteader living on a tight budget. I am always looking for ways to save money. For a while, one of my most significant homesteading expenses was ownership straw or other bedding for my livestock.

Luckily, I figured out ways to raise livestock without having to keep a covered floor. For case, with chickens, since I have a wood floor in my coop, I don't apply litter materials at all.

I utilise a flat spade to loosen stuck-on chicken poop. Then, I sweep the poop into my dustpan and either compost it or age it in a saucepan for other applications. This method has saved me about $xx a month on litter for chickens.

Meanwhile, I was still spending about $sixty a month on bedding materials for my goats.

One day, as I was cleaning the goat befouled, I noticed that virtually of the urine was concentrated in 3 areas of the floor. I changed out the straw, making a notation of the urine locations. The next time I cleaned the barn, I checked to come across if the goats peed in the aforementioned spots once again.

Yeah! They peed in the aforementioned spots a second time. Well, my mental wheels started turning, and I began noticing other things about goat behavior.

Similar when my goats would sit down down, they would use their hooves to move aside the straw I had strewn for them. They preferred the hardwood flooring to a straw-padded 1. This was as well true out in the pasture; the goats loved the rocky, deadpan soil on the steepest parts of their hillside to the lush grassy areas.

So, one mean solar day I cleaned upwards one-half of the befouled and didn't apply any harbinger. The next forenoon, I establish all of my goats sleeping on the strawless side of the barn.

Based on these two observations, I started to hatch a plan…

The Goat Litter Box

I cleaned the goat barn from elevation to bottom, including a thorough floor washing with lather and water to dilute the urine smells in heavily trafficked areas.

Afterward that, I set up two caprine animal litter boxes near where the goats usually peed. To make the litter boxes, I congenital a five×4 foot box, in the same manner that yous would brand raised garden beds.

It'southward important to make the litter box big enough that your caprine animal tin stand inside, plow around, and comfortably squat (girls) or stretch (boys) to pee. Otherwise, they'll miss. I take Nigerian Dwarf goats, and so 5 x 4 feet boxes worked well. Larger goats may need a larger box.

I filled the box with four inches of straw, applied some of their old urine smelling harbinger to aid them get the message. Then I watched to see what happened.

Railroad train Your Goats to Use a Litter Box

My oldest goat, Phoebe, laid down in the box for a footling while. However as my other does started peeing in it, she moved over to a straw bale I sat in the corner for her. (Phoebe is eleven and is my only caprine animal who likes to sit on soft surfaces.)

Every so oft, a goat would miss and pee just outside the box. I kept a bucket of wood ash from our hardwood stove in the goat befouled and covered the moisture spots with ash.

Once the ash did its job and soaked up the urine, I swept up the ash and put it in my compost pile. The goats didn't seem to like the wet ash on their floor, and then they got improve about peeing inside the box.

All of my does took to the litter box in a solar day or two. My wether (castrated male person) took a little longer to arrange.

He would urinate anywhere on small accumulations of hay or straw that had been pushed from the litter box. I cleaned upwards those little piles and put them in the litter box so he would scent his own urine at that place in the time to come.

It took a few days of abiding moving of urine piles for my wether to get the message. But he finally did.

During the times when my buck was allowed to visit the ladies, he was not quite as precise in his placement. He did use the litter box at times. However, he also randomly peed on his own face to attract their attending.

Unfortunately, cadet face up-spraying can't exist eradicated past a litter box. Luckily, bucks only tend to run with the ladies for a footling while. Also, almost of their urine spray ends up in their beards!

Once everyone was mostly trained, I removed the second box so that I would only have to make clean i goat litter box regularly.

Training Kids to Use the Caprine animal Litter Box

Immature kids (baby goats) don't always know when they accept to pee. And so, they tend just to become when they have to. Withal, afterwards a couple of weeks, they pick up the habit of peeing in the litter box past simply watching their mother do it.

I effort to go along my barn floors a lot cleaner while I have kids around since they are apt to swallow everything until their sense of smell is fully adult. So, in part, just by keeping the floors clean, they gravitate towards the litter box for doing their business.

Goat Befouled Maintenance with a Goat Litter Box

Goats poop everywhere. I haven't been able to break them of this addiction. So, twice daily, I sweep up their manure from their goat barn. Information technology takes well-nigh iv-v minutes and is as like shooting fish in a barrel equally sweeping our kitchen floor.

I empty the dustpan direct into a night trash can for composting. When the tin can is full, I gyre the can out into the dominicus, moisten the manure, loosely close the lid (then air nonetheless gets in), and come up back a few weeks later to find everything fully composted.

For the goat litter box, I add a slice of straw each twenty-four hour period. Then one time a calendar week, I pitchfork the urine straw into my 8×4 foot worm bed.

Worms dearest urine soaked straw. Be careful not to apply more than ii-4 inches at a fourth dimension, or information technology will hot compost and cook your worms. (My worms also get kitchen scraps and weeds to circular out their diet).

The wood floor below the litter box is occasionally damp from urine seepage when I pick up the harbinger. So I encompass it with wood ash and then sweep that back up in a few minutes and toss it in my compost can (not my worm bin).

If that doesn't sufficiently dry the floor, I let it air dry before I refill the goat litter box. In good weather, the goats will go outside rather than pee on a bare wood floor while I practise my cleaning.

Every few months, I move the goat litter box over a few feet to give the flooring a residue. Since the goats now go the concept, they pee wherever the litter box is located.

Using the Goat Litter Box in Wintertime

In wintertime, when it's cold, the goats do like to slumber in straw or hay for warmth. During cold runs, I disperse harbinger over the unabridged floor; then I put the goat litter box in place on peak of the straw.

Because the goats are also visually trained to recognize the goat litter box, they tend to pee mostly where I put the box frame. Goats are sensitive to ammonia smells, and then even in winter, it'south essential to clean the caprine animal litter regularly to avoid lung issues.

Usually, I empty the litter in the box each calendar week. Nonetheless, in the residuum of the barn, I tin layer a few inches of new straw and look a couple more than weeks before I clean the unabridged barn (equally weather permits).

The goats do have a few more "accidents" exterior the litter box when in that location is straw roofing the entire barn floor. And then, I practise occasionally have to pitchfork potty-harbinger from other parts of the befouled.

In spring, when I clear the straw from the floors again, occasionally i or two goats try to pee in the wrong place. I go along the floors swept and motility pee piles over to the litter box to aid them become the message. Within a couple of days, they are peeing in the litter box like pros again!

Benefits of Using the Goat Litter Box Method

I accept viii goats in my befouled. In warm weather, it takes almost a one-half bale of straw per calendar week for urine management. Sometimes in hot weather, they drink more than and pee more, and then I occasionally become through a little extra straw. In winter I use more for caprine animal warmth, but it's still less than I used to apply.

Overall, I am spending an boilerplate of $20-25 a month on goat litter, downwards from my starting point of $60 a calendar month. On a homestead budget, this makes a big difference.

It besides cuts down on my time cleaning the goat barn. I used to spend virtually 10 minutes a day spreading new harbinger. Then each week, I'd spend 1-ii hours filling wheelbarrows and moving that harbinger back out to my compost pile. That's not even counting all the fourth dimension I spent picking upwardly and hauling harbinger bales to the goat barn!

At present I spend ten minutes a day sweeping up poop, and putting it directly into my compost tin, and spreading a little fresh straw. When I clean the litter box in summer, it only takes about 10-15 minutes (depending on whether the goats are in the barn "helping me" or out on their hill).

Even in winter, I only spend about 20 minutes on litter box cleaning and straw spreading each week. Then nigh every iii weeks, I spend about an hour cleaning out the former straw. Since the urine straw is the heaviest and hardest to move, having information technology one identify and clearing it regularly cuts down on all the heavy lifting I used to do for whole barn cleanings.

Since my goats only sleep in bedding in winter when pest problems are minimal, and I continue a clean floor in warm weather, we haven't had any bug with external parasites in our herd. I tin't swear this relates to going strawless in the sleeping areas, simply the goats seem to like a hard floor a whole lot more the stinky harbinger on a hot summer night! (These are my girls smiling from pleasure while lounging on a cool flooring.)

The really slap-up thing about this thought is that you tin can endeavour information technology with very picayune investment of time and money. Fifty-fifty if for some reason information technology doesn't work for you, then I'd exist willing to bet, yous'll still learn something fascinating about your goats by putting them through this exercise.

If cats can effigy it out, and then why not your goats?

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How to Take Care of a Baby Goat as a Pet

Source: https://morningchores.com/goat-litter-box-training/

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