Its been nearly a year since I decided to try keeping dairy goats at our house. The project is working out pretty well. We have plenty of milk and cover most of the cost of upkeep by selling a few extra gallons a week. We are most of the way through all four seasons and that seems like a good time to assess what has worked and what hasn't.

Keeping livestock in a small pen is called keeping them in a dry lot. Basically, I recently realized with somewhat of a shock, I'm running a small CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). CAFOs are generally regarded as evil and I'm against them--just so we're clear on my capacity for hypocrisy. That said, my biggest criticism of what we are doing is that I wish my goats had a huge lovely pasture in which to roam. They would be happier, healthier, and cheaper to keep if they had room to forage for their meals and entertainment. They don't have that. Maybe one day I'll have a proper farm.

Until then, the goats seem happy enough and are healthy enough. Their milk is sweet, rich, and delicious. But its is hard to keep weight on them. They are served the highest quality organic dairy goat ration. Ditto for free choice hay--its the highest quality organic local hay available and probably worth twice what we pay at $8 a square bale. Their grain is currently $27 for a 50 lb bag, which they eat in a week. That price is subject to change. And I offer them free choice alfalfa pellets. Plus loose minerals and salt. All that, and they still hardly eat enough to keep from losing weight. If they were also foraging, I'm sure they would be fat.

The rest of the management of back yard goats has to do with good planning and paddock design.

This is the view from my kitchen door. Putting the goats this close to the house has worked fabulously. We compost their waste hay and manure. As soon as we figured out we needed to rake up their waste onto the compost pile every day, or every few days as needed, there have been no barnyard smells. Flies have been absolutely controlled by our flock of 6 chickens. Through a damp summer, there have been no noticeable extra flies. The two biggest concerns for suburban goats near the house have been no problem. I can see the goats out my kitchen window, so I know what's happening with them at all times. And they do not intrude into our house, not even via odors or vermin.

We milk at that little stanchion built for free from salvaged scrap lumber. Its 20 steps from modern kitchen convenience. I have the milk chilling in the freezer within minutes of milking. And the whole area is cleaned up in seconds with the same hose I use to water the goats every day.

 Here you can see we accidentally put the grain feeders down hill from the compost pile. Stupid choice, next time we will put the feeding stations uphill of the compost pile for drier happier goat feet. Goats are rather fastidiously clean, nearly dainty, actually. They don't like to stand on damp or dirty ground.

These little hanging feeder buckets are brilliant. If you cut a hole in the fence, they hang outside so goats can eat, but not paw into nor knock them over. As long as they are tied on. I'm still searching for the best method of tying them to the fence.

This shot gives you an idea of how close we are to neighbors. That vague white spot through the woods is the next house, as seen from my kitchen door. Pretty close and no complaints.

We fence with 16 ft cattle panels and T-posts which work perfectly. They say goats are impossible to keep in. This fence is simple, cheap, and has been inviolate. The goats have deep shade with a bit of full sun, there in the front. We built them a small three sided stall covered with a blue tarp as a roof--as cheap and simple as it gets. They mostly ignore this shelter, but will go in to escape hard rain. I rarely let the goats out to run in the yard. Occasionally, if the neighborhood is mostly empty, traffic is still, and one else is home. The goats LOVE to run, of course. It makes them so happy to get turned out. They run for 5 minutes, look in all the house windows, play king of the hill on the back porch, nibble leaves in the forest, then lounge around the door to their fence---near but not in. Because, truth be told, they like being in their own safe territory. We all just wish it were bigger. They don't run away and stay mostly out of the road.

I buy hay 3 bales at a time and its stored under a tarp on the front porch. Quaint, effective-ish, dry enough, but we do track a fair amount of hay inside. If we stay in this house, we will build a small hay storage area--possibly under a bent cattle panel with yet another blue tarp. Blue tarps rule!

Hay is fed free choice, which amounts to a flake a day, split into two black stock tanks--the kind usually used for water. We have two so each goat can have their own. The eat the hay, then lay in it alternately nibbling, napping, and cudding the rest of the day. Who doesn't like to eat in bed? This system also offers a nice clean place to sit for anyone visiting in the goat yard.