How to Build (almost free) Goat Housing

Here is how we sourced most of our own materials to make a goat house for almost free. I will explain our expenses. 

We acquired our neighbors old hunting cabin. When I say old, I mean very old. It doesn't look pretty, but some of the structural parts will save us quite a bit of money. 

 You see that above the window? Yeah, that is a bird nest. We soon discovered the cabin was overrun with birds, ant nests, and MICE. Gah!

 First, we cleaned out the junk, which took a while. We then added vinyl flooring. We bought "seconds" at Home Depot, which means since they are flawed in some way they are heavily discounted. This step isn't necessary, so arguably we could have skipped it, but we find when cleaning it makes things MUCH easier. The whole roll was $50, and we have enough left to cover the floors on our rooster chicken coops we are building as well.

 This is my future milking area. Can you envision it? I can't quite yet! 

The back wall began as plastic. Not very goat proof.

We used old barn wood that we sourced for free on the back wall. As a photographer, I am really excited to use it as a backdrop for farm pictures. It was also hold up quite well.

 We had to completely rebuild the side wall as well. It was full of mouse nests and droppings and the wood smelled horrendous. For this wall we used old greenhouse siding that we sourced.

 We build frames over the windows and covered with hardware cloth left over from our chicken coop build. This is to protect the goats from kicking through the window and getting cut.

We added a GIANT door to the back of the coop. This is going to be awesome for cleaning out the house and will open up into the run. It also has three separate latches.

We had to climb onto the roof and patch it, as a lot of water was getting in. We did buy aluminum foil tape and liquid cement to patch.

Our neighbor had some old chain link fencing that was just sitting around so he gave it to us.We used this in combination with some old doors to make a barrier wall, separating the supplies/food/milking area from the goat area.

At this point we were ready to add the girls! 

 The Dogloo was another free find. Woohoo!

 It was a huge success with the goats, they love to jump on top to look out of the window at us.

Our hay feeder is an old re purposed flower planter that we found at a swap program.

"Good morning, Mama!"

We added a board and a latch to "goat proof" the entry way. It is holding up very well.

My milking area to be- I can finally start to see it! I can't wait for it to be done.

In between studs is proving to be a great place to hang supplies.

When we add the milking area by next spring I will update this post. I will also update when we add our fenced run, which we will be using cattle panels for. Hopefully later in the summer we can paint and add fun signs and artwork, some of my favorite building steps! Thanks for following along, and hopefully with some flexibility about how things look you can make an *almost* free goat house too!