Two Quick and Easy Portable Goat Shelters
Believe or or not, James and I knocked out these two portable goat shelters in one day! James and I have learned: make shelters moveable. That was the driving factor in how we designed these shelters.
Between the chickens and the pigs, we have learned that in order to practice permaculture and regenerative agriculture, the livestock needs to be easily moved from one area to the next. Livestock should be utilized to benefit the land and need to be moved in order for this to happen. Therefore, these two goat shelters are on skids, making them portable. We used two different designs to make best use of the resources we had on hand. We didn’t even have to make a trip to Lowe’s to complete them (though we did do a spontaneous pickup of the free wooden “roof” for the lean-to shelter).
I was concerned that the cattle panel and tarp shelter may blow away or be rolled over with our strong winds. We had some gusty winds this week and it has not moved, and yet it is light enough I can pull this design by myself. With the lean-to shelter, it is heavier and the skids have more surface area with the ground making it difficult for me to move by myself. Working together, James and I can manage it, but for a longer distance using the UTV would be best.
Building a Cattle Panel Portable Goat Shelter
Before we started building our portable goat shelters, we went to YouTube University to gain some insight. After watching HOW TO build a portable GOAT fort (shelter), we knew we had found the basic design we wanted to use. We did use different lumber based upon what we had available. We thought that by using 2x4s as the cross piece on 2x6s, the 2x4s would float over the ground. This would make less surface area contact the ground thereby making the shelter easier to pull. In the video, the cattle panel was covered with hardware cloth to make it so goat hooves would not be able to get stuck inside the panel if they tried to climb it. We opted not to cover ours with hardware cloth and we will just have to see how it goes.
Materials:
- 1 cattle panel, cut in half
- 2 2x6x96″
- 2 2x4x60″
- 2 large screw eyes
- 1 tarp
- 2 wire shelf tracks (we acquired a bunch of these when we got wire shelves off of CraigsList to use as our DigDefence around our chicken coop)
- 4 1×2 scrap wood pieces, approximately 1 foot long each
- barbed fence staples
- miscelaneous screws
After cutting the wood to length and putting an angle on the front of the skid, James notched out each piece of wood so it would make a tight and secure joint. Then, we hammered the wood frame in place and screwed them together. We notched out the cattle panels to fit them over the wood joints. Then, we attached the cattle panels to the inside of the wood using barbed fence staples. We screwed the wire shelf tracks and scrap wood over the tarp to help attach it to the frame. Lastly, we screwed in the screw eyes on the front to have a secure attachment for our tow rope. We made the tow rope using two hooks and a strap from two broken ratchet straps.
Building a Lean-To Portable Goat Shelter
The night before building our shelters, James was on CraigsList. He came across a listing for a free “ramp”. This had been a ramp into a shed doorway, but James and I instantly saw it as a roof for a lean-to. We picked it up the next morning. By that afternoon it was attached to the frame (which also has skids on the bottom) and was out in the pasture awaiting the arrival of our goats. While this shelter does not provide as much protection from the wind and rain, it does offer some protection. It was the best we could do in the short time frame we had to complete the shelters. We now have 3 portable shelters lined up, all surrounded by Premier 1 electric netting.
Hopefully, seeing these designs will give you some inspiration on how you can build your own portable animal shelters!