SHELTERS

Goats do need shelter - they hate the rain.  I am not saying they can't live out in the wilderness, they can.  We gave two goats to some boys for a 4-H project.  They ended up losing them and could not catch them no matter what they did - buckets of grain, anything to get near enough to catch them.  Anyway one of them was eaten by an animal and the other one ended up going with a herd of deer - that goat is still with the herd of deer and the funny thing is when the deer jump the fence and the goat can't jump that high of a fence the deer stop and wait until that goat finds a place to get through the fence and they head out together.  They have always said a goat is the closest thing to a deer and its the truth.

My husband had some guys at work tell him there was a goat running loose at a summer trailer park and they were going to shoot her.  Of course Jim said he would try to catch her and bring her home.  They went out to the trailer park, and the only reason she was there if she has a kid.  She had also been running wild - she survived, but was she ever thin.  He did catch her and she has been part of the herd and we know she could jump the fence at any time and take off, but she has stayed with the herd and has become the matriarch of the group and boy is she bossy! 

To get back to the subject, Jim has built shelters for our goats as you can see by the pictures.  For the 30 does we have a quansat but most of the time, I don't care how cold it is outside they lay out in the open.  Only when it is snowing or raining do they venture to the quansat.