Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Your pH tester will tell you quite a bit.

Once I learn to understand all the nuances of its language...

I got good grades in chemistry...but I've slept since then. I'm sure it will come back to me, slowly but surely, if I keep working at it.

Turns out 1500 lbs in one day is about my limit, so instead of me making a second trip last night, Hubs went and got the rest of my bricks for me today while I worked. He wouldn't willingly admit it, but he's really not terribly interested in aquaponics and rocket mass heaters. But he thinks I'm cute when I'm excited about stuff, so he indulges me by doing things like finding time to move 1500 more lbs of bricks for me in between working at his own job and mailing worms for me and making sure my chickens get put up when I work late shifts.

Some women just get flowers and diamonds and stuff. *I* get COOL stuff, like goats and IBCs and greenhouses and bricks. Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?

He's a pretty awesome guy. I just thought I'd say that here, since he's sound asleep and I can't tell him right now.

One more day of work tomorrow, then I finally get a day off. I won't have time for aquaponics, though...the chooks have outgrown the temporary feeders I threw together for them out of Nestle Quik bulk tins and coffee creamer containers, so I need to build something more permanent. Which means it probably won't fit into their temporary (small) coop, which means it also has to be goat-proof.

I *think* I have a plan just about fully-formed in my head, but if anyone has experience with housing goats and chickens together and has successfully kept the goats from devouring the chicken feed, I'm wide open to advice!

Tell him tomorrow it as sure bet for cuddles and kisses then tell him about the next lot of bricks or IBCs he can move for you. Cheers

I'd put the chicken feed under low table staked into the ground

Goat fence = Horse high, Pig tight, Bull strong; Must hold water.

Goats can squeeze through some holes in a fence so go with a quality brand name. Better yet, buy some cattle panels which are 16' X 4' hard panels. They make some that have 2" X 2" holes or 4" X 4" holes. Those will last a lifetime but they are a bit pricey.
Inside the goat fencing, section a part off where the chickens are to be fed. Drive some metal posts about 6" apart far enough away so the goats can't stick their heads through and help themselves to the chook food. Or use a section of the 2" X 2" hard panel and cut out sections just wide enough for them to walk through but not wide enough for the goat to get through.

Keep in mind that owning goats will lead to people giving you more goats (probably because they are the troublesome ones) and you will end up with large Boer goats down to the Pigmy goats. Guess which ones will get to the chook food because you made the opening too large?

I didn't know goats were like that. I finally had to stop telling people I had parrots, my house was getting overrun with them!

I have 4 goats. Two pygmies, and now I've forgotten what the other two are...(just finished my 7th day in a row of work, and it was a doozie of a 12-hour shift, so my brain cells are kinda fried!) La Mancha? Dwarf Nigerian? Some combination of those. They're all pygmy-sized, though. Really not planning on having more than 4, although I think baby goats are quite possibly among the top 5 most adorable things in the universe.

The FenceGuy built my goat fence. It's only pony-high, and doesn't hold water, but I had him leave the posts tall in case we completely lose our minds and decide to make it hold bigger things sometime down the road. He's good at fences; seems to have done it right, as opposed to the greenhouse, which I'm still miffed about. I wanted to PLAY in it, darnit! Now I have to wait to have time off to fix it, first.

Anyway. The chickens seem to enjoy hanging out with the goats, and I'm thinking that if I make the goat shed a combo chicken coop/goat shed, maybe the goats will keep the rats and raccoons and coyotes away from them at night and I won't have to bother with all the letting chickens in and out every morning and evening. I'm lazy. So I have to build a goat-proof way to feed the chickens. Sometimes being lazy is hard work.

Here's my beautiful granddaughter with some of the goats. (And my fat finger.)

I miss my goat buddy.

Here's Granger on our roof.

He used the car to jump onto to get down

Hey g2n...bullwinkle had a pretty good suggestion...imho




Good luck!
Brian

I dont understand the world.

Goats seem to be able to eat barbed wire and florich.

Ivy seems to be able to survive being blended into a cocktail, and still sprout roots out of the chaos.

Why is the world not populated only by goats and ivy?

(sorry sory soggy I cant still its the spell checkar isnt here)

flourish

Shoulda just left it, BW. When I don't recognize a word you use, I usually just assume it's some weird Aussie thing. In this case, "florich" sounded like the name of some Australian version of our man-eating blackberry vines.

Also, Safari has its own built-in spellchecker. I dunno if it works on Linux, though.

Yeah, I liked that one, 'cause it would also give the goats something fun to climb on...except one of the items on my list of design criteria is that goats have to be able to get TO the feeder, just not INTO the feeder. I need them to keep the rats away from the chicken feed. They are WORKING goats. They just don't know it.

I know noting about goats, except that when I was younger my father would periodically borrow a goat to clean up an overgrown area. I did have to mention that I love your new signature quote. I did suffer from growing up different, but not in the way the other different people were.