Small Scale Boer Goat Barn Design

I get involve into boer goat farming merely two years. I'm no where to be called an expert in the field of goat farming, neither by qualification nor by experience. I have three barns with a total area of about 7000 square feet. I built the second barn 6 months after the first and the third came 6 months after the second. Each time I built the new one, I renovated the previous one/s. The later barn came with new ideas, which bring improvement on the previous. I'm quite happy with the third design, therefore I will not change anything if I were to build my fourth barn. The design is suitable for Malaysian weather and tropical country where there's a lot of rain, warm and very humid. It applies for feedlot system.

1. Barn height

Minimum 5 feet above ground, maximum of 7 feet. More than that is simply a waste and not practical. Lower than 5 feet will make cleaning job under the barn not conducive.

2. Roof height

The lower portion on the edge should be minimum 7 feet height from the floor and the roof slope ratio about 2:10. The roof has no ridge, one side is higher than the other. This is to allow adequate ventilation in the barn. It also prevent rain water from entering the barn.

3. Pen size

I regard the pen sizing as critical. It determines the comfort of the animals. It is where we can keep the goats according to categories; according to their sizes (by age or by body weight), by strength (the weak ones and the strong ones), by gender etc. For a small scale farm, the pen size really critical to determine our efficiency in producing more goats. Through my experience, the most suitable pen size is 10feet by 7feet. It can accommodate 7 to 8 adults very comfortably with sufficient area for resting and space for feeding. A larger area will make it difficult for the buck for mating. He has to do a lot of chasing games. As a result he becomes less productive.

4. Provision for Pregnancy Pen

It is important to separate the pregnant doe in her own pen, for her safety and her baby. She will occupy the pen for about 6 weeks, 3 to 4 weeks before giving birth and 2 to 3 weeks after giving birth.

5. Floor Layout

We shall discuss this topic in the next publish, together with more updated barn pictures.

Goat Farm without Smell?

Not unusual? But not easily found..!! If you come to my farm you will be surprised because there's no smell, I mean reasonably no smell... This is not my own statement but said by my visitors.

Recently my farm was visited by some officers from the Government Agencies from Johor Bahru and Melaka, as well as a few farmers from nearby. All of them will never forget to pass this common comment: "How come your farm has no smell? I don't see any flies (lalat la tu...). What is your secret?"

Secret? Do I have any secret? I never used secret product or formula... At all if they want to call it a secret, let them.

I supposed everyone knows or heard about EM, Effective Micro-Organism. This is my secret. But some of the visitors said they used EM but their farm still smell bad. My suggestion is, you change another supplier.

There are many locally produced EM. Some are good and some are not good. The result tells. I'm sure mine was a good one simply because it works... According to my supplier/producer, he imported the main ingredient from Japan. He mixed it with molasses and some other materials.

I cleaned the droppings under the farm every 2 to 3 weeks. From under the farm, I transferred them to in front of the farm. It will be there sometimes 2 to 3 months before I used them as fertilizer for my grass or palm oil plantations nearby. Even for that long period, still there's no smell. Amazing? Quite..!!

How do I apply the EM. Two ways. First step is mixing the EM into drinking tank. Ratio 1 to 1000. Do it twice weekly, every Monday and Thursday. Second step is spray the EM to every part of the farm including the goats. Do it once a month.

EM will help the digestion. As a result, there is no case of "bloating" and very few cases of diarrhea. In short: A healthy goats....

Since I practice ZWDW system, there are traces of EM flowed into the well and sprinkled to grass field, my grass can also enjoy the benefits of EM through the sprinkler and organic fertilizer.

Can I claim that I produce ORGANIC GOATS?

Zero Waste Drinking Water System - ZWDW

In my previous publish, I mentioned about drinking water wastage and inefficient usage of manpower in drinking water management.
But how to manage the system and achieve no wastage of resources and increased efficiency? Wastage happened when we have to throw away the unconsumed drinking water. So wastage can be avoided simply by "not creating" the wastage water. To achieve that we need to change the water system from putting them in pails or buckets or containers... to a direct drinking system using "drinking nipples".
Nipple is available in most shop dealing with agriculture accessories. Each will cost less than RM20.00. It is a very marginal additional cost compared to the advantages we might achieve in the long run. To establish a complete drinking system, of course we need to construct the piping system, connecting from the water tank to distribute it to every pan.

What is "Zero Wastage Drinking Water System". Let's call it ZWDW system.

Even if we use nipple, there will be a little bit of water spilled over from the nipple while the goats enjoying the water. Also, there are some naughty goats which like to "play" with the nipples, enjoying the ejected water, washing their face, rubbing their nose etc... Those wastage if we can recycle them into some usage, then we can achieve ZWDW. Of course we should not use it as drinking water again...

The wasted water can also make the wooden floor in the pan (under the nipples) becoming soft. Without proper control, it will cause the floor broken. So we need some kind of water collecter to capture the water, channel it to a reservoir and reuse/recycle them. I used PVC "pipe-reducer" as water collecter. I need to use 6" to 4" plus 4" to 2" plus 2" to 1" reducers to make a complete water collecter. From the collecter the water is channelled via a 1" piping system to a pond next to the farm.

Water in the pond is collected from the rain water, collected from the roof plus ground water plus water from the ZWDW system. These water is then used to water the grass whenever there's no rain.

That's how ZWDW system works. It saves cost, time, efficient and produces healthy goats.