Rain, rain go away

[angelavl]

Hello all, this is my first post here and I'm a brand new goat owner. We have two dwarf nigerian wethers who are 2 mos and 1 year old, we have had them for just about 1 week. Sadly, the weather here has been pretty terrible and rainy most of the week. I'm feeling kind of bad b/c they really don't like the rain and hang out in their little shed most of the day. Now the ground is getting over-saturated and some of highly traveled areas in their pen is getting pretty muddy. So, I'm trying to put straw and wood chips out on the highly traveled areas so it's not too bad. Surely the weather in Washington will begin to improve... but if not is there anything I should be concerned about? Will they get bored? If so, will they do naughty stuff? Am I analyzing this a little too much?

Thanks - Angela

 

[RainySunday]

*Waves* Hi Angela!

The weather here is the pits for farm animals. On the upside, mine have never gotten too naughty even when they hide from the ran for days on end. We've found wood chips work the best for us for traction/mud control. In the worst of it this winter, we actually put down a bunch of small pine/fir/cedar branches, then chips over the top, that seemed to help. When it isn't really bad, even a bag of pine shavings helps.

If you are really worried about boredom, you could try to put up some sort of canopy/tarp (angled of course) over a larger area of their area, so they could play under it. Stumps, rocks, children's climbing toys, wooden spools (like wire comes on), etc are all great "toys". Poke around on here under goats-general and behavior, and I think there are some threads with neat toy ideas.

Hope those two are behaving for you!

-Chelsea

 

[angelavl]

Hi Chelsea! Yes, they are wonderful little guys. Thanks for taking such good care of them. They are very friendly and affectionate. The little guy jumped from a log onto my back the other day when I was bending over petting his big brother. I was laughing so hard. He was just standing there happy as a clam, enjoying the view. I had to get down really low and kind of shake him off.

We will need to move their pen this weekend b/c they have successfully cleared this first section (16x 32ish). I'm going to try to get them up onto higher ground, so hopefully the mud won't be as much of an issue.

Thanks for saying hi!

 

[SDBoerGoats]

It's been pouring big thunderstorms here in Oregon too, I live in the high desert! My daughters both live in Washington and they are about to float away. Our weather is usually not so wet but every once in a while.

Anyway, I think they will be fine. They might get bored, but they hate rain, so they'll hang out til it's over. That's what mine did, the second the rain starts they high tail if for the barn. But the second it stops, here they come!
You probably have a lot more rain than we do and our ground is so sandy there's not much to speak of. So you might put chips out for them to have places to walk til it dries up. Oh and anything for them to jump on, wooden spools, tractor tires. I have huge natural boulders on the hillside areas, I mean HUGE, and they live on them, even the adults. It's like they are drawn to the rocks.

 

[angelavl]

Some big rocks would be nice. I heard that it's good for them to have rocks to help grind away at their hooves. I may have to get a few big landscape rocks.