# Size of shelter



## laceyms (Aug 4, 2014)

I have a shelter that is probably 9 feet long and 5 feet deep. It is incredibly well built and the floor is up off of the ground and full of bedding. Before this year I had two goats, both NDs and I recently picked up an alpine to keep up with my family's need for more milk. One of my NDs is obviously the bottom of the pecking order. She is very leery of the bigger alpine and as such I have been noticing she won't use the shelter, in fact, since we moved them to a different pen, none of them will use it! The temps have been in the teens every night and I'm so frustrated that they won't use their shelter! Should I just let them be? Or find a way to separate the two small goats from the larger and lock them in somehow? Sell the larger one because we no longer need her? I am just tired of worrying about them being too cold and am unsure of how to proceed. Is my shelter just plain too small or can I make it work?


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## snrsfarm (Jul 2, 2013)

We have a barn that is about 20x20. We have three Alpines & five Nigerian Dwarf does shearing it with twenty chickens. Every one is healthy and happy. They really don't sleep inside much, the chickens roost inside at night, but the only time everyone is inside together is when it rains or snows. We also have apple bins we use in other pens. I've seen two Nigerian Dwarf does and an alpine doe crammed into it when it was raining.

I think you could make it work, but the question is do you want to. Your goats will use it when they want, or when it rains.


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## SeventeenFarms (Dec 10, 2013)

I started with a 4x 8 shelter - well built and off the ground for three boers. And then I added a fourth boer. The two smaller ones - one of the original boers and the new, seemed intimidated to go in , or were pushed out and would curl up under a platform I had made for them to play on. So, I put together a second shelter, although I will need to make it better built as I get time. It seems the two bigger use the original and the two smaller use the newer one. It would be best to have one shelter, but I guess that is not how its going to work out. I hope to buy a well built "garden type shed" in the future and put them all in it. I really wish I had a bigger barn that had space for them, but its only big enough for my three horses. Bottom line is that for the most part, it works out this way, and they are dry when they need to be, and are healthy, and warm when it gets cold. It'd be great if they all got along and huddled together in the original shelter, but I have accepted that that isnt about to happen, and have had to make do.


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