New Digs

There are two new stalls at Leafhopper Farm! We put together new space for goats and sheep under a lean-to next to the coop. The old enclosure is housing some new birds we recently received from another land owner nearby.  With this move, we begin to slowly transform our entire animal housing location. The old coop is getting too small; even after a bird cull at the end of November, we’re still over the count for that small coop, and it’s time to grow. 

The security of these new stalls is weaker- a cougar could crawl into this enclosure, but space and ventilation are much better, and as we adapt this new building, we’ll reinforce the walls. Eventually, this new area of enclosure will allow us an opportunity to rest the old coop ground, improve on those existing structures to better are overall livestock production, and get rid of rats and old rotting structure that is decrepit and unsafe. 

The goats love their new hay creche, and Gamble climbs into it for the best eating. She’ll grow out of it soon enough. Feeding your livestock off the ground is important to avoid parasite infestation from eating off the ground in the poop. 

Below, you can see all the animals standing happily in the pasture to the right of their new “Barn”. Now everyone can be outside with access to their stalls so rain or shine, they all have pasture available, and shelter with water and mineral. We were not able to do this before because the goats were jumping out of the electric mesh netting. They might again, but we’ll hope with the right pasture rotation and access to the stall, they will be content. I know for Brownie, her size might make it difficult now to jump over. 

We’ll continue to try this setup for the next month. If it works, and the animals follow rotation successfully, we’ll go back to using electric mesh instead of the tether system. Though tethering works well, it limits the amount of animals I can manage. Another reason the fence is working now, involves direct plug in to the grid, rather than risking solar charges weakening. There are advanced battery systems you can use, and we will look into that in future, but for now, all animals respect the fence and are grazing happily here at Leafhopper Farm.