Shed Clean Out and... Kids???

I know I keep saying that Gerda is really close to having her kids, but this time I really mean it. 😅 Her udder feels tight and full, and I'm pretty sure I saw some mucus coming out this morning. 

When I think back to how small her udder was in early December and how worried we were that she would kid when we were gone, I have to laugh. She's probably three times as big now as she was then. 😂 Well, now we know for next time. 

Thankfully we're in a warm stretch this week. My father-in-law was able to take Jaron for a couple hours this morning so I could tidy up in the shed.

Because of the cold stretch, the goats were stuck inside that whole time, and the poop has really built up. I wanted to clean out the back area so Gerda would have a fresh clean place for her babies. 

Turns out, there's about one foot of bedding on the goat side of the shed. I took this picture after I had cleaned out all of the hay from the back corner.

After it was all out, my protective bar was way too high up. The mama goats could walk right underneath it. (I also found a duck egg buried in the hay. I wonder if it's still good?)

The chickens loved scratching in the dirt once it was uncovered. A bunch of them gave themselves dust baths until I rebedded the area with straw.

The amount of hay I took out of the back corner:

Why is there so much? Well, most of it is wasted hay the goats were supposed to eat. We need to get a better feeder. Goats are actually pretty picky eaters; they really like eating leaves and not stems. So if the hay they're getting doesn't have a lot of leaves, they eat the good stuff and leave the bad stuff- aka the stems- behind. Sometimes they knock their feeder over (which is just a big tub) and everything falls out. We could put that hay back in, but if they poop on it before we can, that's no good, and the hay ends up as part of the bedding mound. 

So, a better feeder is at the top of the to-do list!

Back to the shed clean out...

Here's the lowered bar. I added another above it just in case.

After putting fresh straw down, the back area was finished. I thought about cleaning out more of the shed, but since it's only the beginning of February, there's still a lot of potential for cold weather. The deep bedding helps to keep the animals warm in two ways - one, by insulating them from the cold ground / keeping them higher off the floor; two, the bottom layers of bedding can decompose, providing heat. I'm not sure how deep the bedding has to be in order for part two to happen, but I figured it'd be better to leave it. 

Even if Gerta has her babies in the main area, we can easily move her into the back corner with her kids until they have bonded. Stay tuned on whether my prediction is correct!