Luckiest
Exploring the pasture
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2012
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Hello! I'm very new to this and have so many questions.
We live in central Austin, TX. We have a 4 chickens who have free roam of the yard all day and roost in a pre-fab coop at night. Austin allows mini livestock as pets, so we're looking into a pair of goats, possibly as dairy goats if we feel up to kidding.
We have an unused garden shed, about 12x20, that we could convert into a barn/shelter, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I would like to figure out how to keep both goats and chickens in the same building. I know it would need ventilation (I'm thinking just cutting lots of window holes and covering with hardware cloth?), but that's about as far as I get before I run into so many questions...
Can chickens and goats share a space at night? How separated do they need to be? I would love to have more chickens but my tiny coop is at capacity with 4. I was thinking I could build in a 4' wall and basically bisect the front and back of the shed, which wouldn't keep my un-clipped chickens from getting at the goats, but it would keep the goats from the chickens (and their feed). Do they need to be more separated than that?
How free-roaming can goats be? We have 6' privacy fencing around our yard, so I wouldn't be worried about a pygmy escaping the yard. Will they destroy our patio furniture? I'm just guessing that dwarf goats would be less destructive than their bigger cousins. I assume they'll eat my fig tree...We could run fencing along the back third of our yard (where the shed is) and they'd still have a good sized area, but if they can just roam the yard that is what I'd prefer. This likely isn't our "forever" house, so I don't want to do tons of modification if we're going to sell this house in 5 years (though we wouldn't move out of the city, so I'm not concerned about needing to give up the animals).
Any tips are appreciated!
We live in central Austin, TX. We have a 4 chickens who have free roam of the yard all day and roost in a pre-fab coop at night. Austin allows mini livestock as pets, so we're looking into a pair of goats, possibly as dairy goats if we feel up to kidding.
We have an unused garden shed, about 12x20, that we could convert into a barn/shelter, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I would like to figure out how to keep both goats and chickens in the same building. I know it would need ventilation (I'm thinking just cutting lots of window holes and covering with hardware cloth?), but that's about as far as I get before I run into so many questions...
Can chickens and goats share a space at night? How separated do they need to be? I would love to have more chickens but my tiny coop is at capacity with 4. I was thinking I could build in a 4' wall and basically bisect the front and back of the shed, which wouldn't keep my un-clipped chickens from getting at the goats, but it would keep the goats from the chickens (and their feed). Do they need to be more separated than that?
How free-roaming can goats be? We have 6' privacy fencing around our yard, so I wouldn't be worried about a pygmy escaping the yard. Will they destroy our patio furniture? I'm just guessing that dwarf goats would be less destructive than their bigger cousins. I assume they'll eat my fig tree...We could run fencing along the back third of our yard (where the shed is) and they'd still have a good sized area, but if they can just roam the yard that is what I'd prefer. This likely isn't our "forever" house, so I don't want to do tons of modification if we're going to sell this house in 5 years (though we wouldn't move out of the city, so I'm not concerned about needing to give up the animals).
Any tips are appreciated!
