Below you will find an easy and brilliant way to build a goat house using pallets! It’s a cost-effective way to use easy to find material to make great winter and out-of-the-rain shelters for your goats.
If you love your goats and are interested in more information, check out all of the information here: Raising Goats.
How to build a “goat house” using wood pallets
Goats are a wonderful addition to a family! We appreciate them so much! But it was time to build them a sufficient goat shelter for winter.
To answer the question, “Do goats need shelter in the winter”, yes, they do. Especially in our cold, snowy and windy climate. They do need protection from the elements as much as possible.
This summer, I spent some time building some goat shelters they could tuck into during the long, cold, deep winter drift days of Montana. Here is the outcome. They snuggle in and are quite happy!
AND these are so simple to build!
Here are several reasons I like these goat shelters:
- Pallets, at least around here, are easy to find and are free.
- They are so very easy to make!
- Their “floor” is the ground, which means that all of the moisture from the poop and urine is soaking into the ground and not rotting a good piece of plywood. (I bet the earthworms are having a hay day under our goat houses!)
- They are small (compared to a barn) and the body heat from the animals keep it relatively warm.
- They can be moved and relocated if needed.
- They effectively provide shelter from the wind, rain, snow, and elements.
- I plan to reuse old rain gutters on the side. This will accomplish two things: keeping the runoff from hitting the sides and it will drain into a water trough that will give our goats and chickens another option of fresh water to drink.
This is how you build a shelter out of pallets:
3 pallets screwed together to make the frame of the goat house
Materials needed:
• 3 pallets
• 3 2×4’s from a torn apart pallet
• Screws
• Roofing Material
• More pallet boards to enclose the sides so wind can’t get through
One pallet is standing so it is at its tallest and the other two pallets are on their sides. The pallets are then screwed together. A 2×4 is screwed to the bottom, front to hold it all together. The roofing material chosen is then screwed to the top.
You can find a lot of articles here on A Life of Heritage that will teach you about goat care and be sure to check out The Goat Health, and Information Bundle–it’s full of to-do lists, checklists, record keeping sheets, and resource pages that will get your new (or old) goat herd off to a terrific start!
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Goat house with the roof added
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As you can see in this next picture, I enclosed the sides with more boards:
Boards screwed to sides to close up the pallets walls
And I added a pallet on the front to help block the wind.
(Yes! I’ve found eggs nestled into the corners of the shelters from time to time!)
This is a frame of another pallet shelter:
Pallet shelter frame
Goat house with added patio to the side 🙂
I framed in a “porch” on two of the shelters I made. So they can get out of the sun but be cooler in the breeze in the summer months:
All ready for winter!
Again, on these pallet goat houses, I added a pallet on the front to block the wind more.
Pallet paradise
This size comfortably allows two goats to snuggle up together. Although after getting our buck, they all snuggle up together in one shelter.
And I also screwed boards onto the outside walls to block more of the wind.
Happy Goats!
Happy goats in the Montana winter!
There are so many good ideas on how to make a goat shelter! For me, especially considering cost, these work best for us because we can always pick up free pallets in our area. And for these shelters, we had the roofing material given to us for free after a porch on a house was torn off. So really, I only paid for some screws. That works for me!
What goat housing has worked best for you?
SHELTERS FOR SMALL ANIMALS
Notes
SHELTER OPTIONS:
MORE OPTIONS:
READ MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SHELTERS FOR GOATS:
IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS:
I also realized that this shelter wasn’t big enough for my family of goats in the spring. So I built a double sized goat shelter <=== Check it out and let me know what you think!
This Pinterest board has more ideas to get you thinking about goat houses for your goats: more goat house ideas
Seriously, our free resource page is worth looking into! Check it out below!
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I also would love to know what would help you. What can we add to our resource page to make your life that much easier? Email me your ideas: [email protected]
If you would like a sneak peek into our resource page:
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Lexi says
I am a beginner goat raiser and don’t know much about goat, but what about dearing the winter. Where I live it has really cold winters and I don’t want my goats to freeze.
Delci Plouffe says
Hey Lexi! How exciting that you are just getting started with goats! I totally understand your concern about the winter months. I live in Montana and we have already been below zero this fall quite a bit. Your goats will need to be able to get out of the wind and off of the snow and dry. So your shelter needs to provide them that area. Adding straw where they can bed down and snuggle up together will be important as well. And keeping them healthy with mineral and nutrition will give them a healthy winter coat that will keep them warm as well. Always provide open water for them. I use a plugin heater to my water trough, this will not only keep the water open but will also encourage them to keep drinking on the cold days. Be so watchful for signs of pneumonia as well. The really cold days that warm up in the daytime, make it a perfect setup for them to get pneumonia. Just be prepared with your supplies so you can help them if need be. If you would like a bit of insight into beginning to raise goats you can get this 5-Day mini-course for free. When you click “checkout” it will show as 0 is owed and will have videos, some printouts, and tools to help you feel more confident as you get started. https://shop.alifeofheritage.com/discount/preparedgoatowner?redirect=%2Fproducts%2Fprepare-for-goats-5-day-mini-course I wish you all the best! If you have more questions, please feel free to ask!
Toni Lozano says
Is a goat house also called a pen?
Delci Plouffe says
See the previous answer 🙂
Richard says
Is a goat house also called a pen?
Delci Plouffe says
I would say that a goat house would be something like what this post shows or like the barn we also use during kidding. And a pen would be the outside area that they are enclosed into to keep them safe during the night (if predators aren’t an issue) or when you are gone.
Melissa DeVore says
Thank you for posting these instructions. I am getting dwarf goats in May and my husband and I are gathering supplies now for the goat house. These instructions are easy to follow. We will have leftover metal roofing from our new roof, so we will use that for the roof (their house will match ours).
Delci Plouffe says
That is so exciting and so great to be able to use the material you already have! I hope all goes well for you! Enjoy those goats!
Earl says
Hello Delci, our family is about to get 4-5 Kikos and overwinter them… First off, thanks for the information. I have one question for you about predators. Do you have many? What kinds? Don’t you need doors to help protect goats from them? What do you do to help protect the goats?
Delci Plouffe says
Hello! We don’t have predators right where we live. If we lived any more out of town I would have to protect them more. If I did move and there were predators, I would enclose them in a barn at night. Or make a shelter that had wire and the ability to close doors at night as well.
Marcia DeHaven says
Thank you for the information on the pallet goat shelter. Our farm supply store gives pallets away so this will be an almost “free” shelter. I have had a fence put up to protect from predators at night. We are in the country and there has been a recent sighting of Bob Cats on our road.
My goat is a pet. He has been disbudded and castrated. Since he is the only goat I have at this time he thinks he is a dog. He runs the property with the dogs in the morning, naps with them in the afternoon and will come running when I whistle for him anytime.
Again thanks for the pen info. He will be dry and comfortable in his new “home”