My Goat Barn

Early in 2005 (as in January) I started another project. We had purchased a couple of young goats from a lady that Darryl had gotten to know and had them in with his goats. We desired to have a barn of our own to house them in, especially when they kidded.

The barn could be called a “pole barn” since I used cedar poles cut from the woods as the main posts, floor joists and ceiling joists. The siding, flooring, etc. is all rough sawn oak directly from an Amish sawmill. It is what is commonly referred to as “cull wood” or “barn lumber.” It is boards that are rejected from the graded material due to knots, bad spots, irregular thickness, etc. Overall it is good material but is sold by the bundle of 600-800 board feet. I paid $100.00 per bundle.

The barn is approximately 16’ by 16’ with a loft above. Having to build it on a hillside (we don’t have much flat land on the ridge) the floor is on 4 different levels. Later on I added a chicken house to the back side of the barn.

On the right side of the barn, as you are looking at the picture, there are 2 walk through doors. One is use mainly for clean out of the loafing area, the other enters into the milking area. There are also 2 doors on the left, one for the goats to use and the other to exit into the goat and chicken yard. My access to the loft for putting in hay is through the small door directly above the left window in the picture. I access the loft inside via a ladder, my short extension ladder. It creates a great place to store the ladder and can be removed to be used by simply lifting in out.

I used the metal siding that I removed from the house on the roof. The windows are all salvaged from other areas. Total investment was somewhere between $500.00 and $600.00.