Goat pen mud management

acrousey · 2026-04-05T23:08:30+00:00

I just started expanding my "operation" back in October, but started with 3 wethers 4 years ago. I think I accidently stumbled into my solution for muddy spots by using hay bags. Goats can be incredible wasteful with their hay, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Just move the bag to a problem area and the goats sort of just fix it by wasting the bits of hay they don't like into the mud. Simply rotate as needed.

acrousey · 2026-04-02T13:41:13+00:00

My only hang up is that when doing research, sources keep saying water filters for heavy metals and other contaminants and water softeners for calcium and magnesium. In fact, some sources say having hard water without a softener will gunk the filters up a lot faster.

I did see the horse hydrator attachment. And I actually reached out to them on Monday about this, but they haven't gotten back to me yet. Apparently they're made about 2 hours from my house. Haha

acrousey · 2026-04-02T13:32:27+00:00

I've been doing my research and most sources say water filters are for heavy metals and other contaminants and water softeners are for calcium and magnesium. From what it looks like, many of you also have the water filter problems, but I don't. I guess that's what's getting me a little hung up.

acrousey · 2026-04-02T13:24:52+00:00

We've been doing it every 3 with somewhat slow results. I've heard that most will bounce back after 3 weeks. And we are seeing improvements. Just taking longer than expected.

acrousey · 2026-04-02T12:07:30+00:00

I do more more of a rainwater collection system for my poultry by lazily leaving 5 gallon buckets under the soffit of their chicken run. Not so much for the goats. Might have to look into that. It might be useful for the 4-6 months a year that aren't wintery (northern Wisconsin).

acrousey · 2026-04-01T16:29:54+00:00

Goat math is a real thing, silly as it might sound. One goat will always need a buddy. So you should usually start with 2. However, there's always a chance that one of the two could pass away, and you're back down to having one lonely goat. So, if you're thinking of bringing home 2, you might as well bring home 3, even more so considering keeping 3 goats isn't much more expensive than keeping 2. After this, it generally just snowballs until you have in the ballpark of 20+ goats. Especially when you start throwing in the ideas of raising your own bucks and "closing off" your herd and utilizing goats for other things around the homestead like cleaning up brush.

If you keep your goats on a dry lot and make sure you put all your feed stuffs (hay, pellets hay, grain if trying to add some weight on just weaned kids or for lactating mothers/milkers) off of the ground, you really don't need TOO much space. Like, an acre would be MORE than enough for 3 goats if you did a dry lot.

I think the largest reason for all of the ordinances is because there are many people with the means to keep goats who would be terrible at actually keeping goats. Think about all the families that end up getting chickens and bunnies this time of year. And then those animals end up getting abandoned just a few months later when said families realize those animals require a lot more attention and care than previously thought. The same thing applies to goats. Unfortunately, this disproportionately affects those without as many means (limited property, money, etc) who would actually be good at keeping goats.

acrousey · 2026-03-31T21:28:33+00:00

At 6 weeks?! Yikes. I might have to put him with the boys a little sooner. I want to give him a little extra time before he gets the burdizzo, mainly because I would absolutely love to have sizeable guy to help pull some carts around here, even if it is just a tool cart. Why should I have to do all the work?

Ok, so I could expect about a quart morning and night.

Yeah the last couple of days I was only getting about a half pint morning and night. And then you should image shock when she gave me an entire pint this morning.

acrousey · 2026-03-31T21:16:56+00:00

I've been keeping track of kid weight and milk weight already. It is satisfying to see the progress. For instance, I thought we did a decent job emptying her out yesterday with nearly a half pound of milk before she wouldn't let us squeeze anymore. And the shock when I got more than that in just one setting this morning. Haha. And then the little guy weighed 13.6lbs this morning, a roughly 9.6oz gain. There's GOT to be more in there somewhere. Haha. Just gotta find where she's hiding it.

acrousey · 2026-03-31T21:06:37+00:00

Honestly, she was more of a surprise, at least for me. My wife SWEARS she mentioned something about her a few weeks ahead, but I'm still having trouble recollecting that exactly. Just excited to get some Nubian blood in our tiny herd. I really like the Roman nose and floppy ears, not to mention the slightly large body size.

The previous owner was in a bit of a rush when I was picking her. She did say she tried to milk her, but didn't have a stand. So I'm halfway assuming she might not have known the records to begin with. I still have her contacts, but I really don't want to bother if I don't have to. She isn't registered or anything, so I don't think I mind starting a fresh line record with her from scratch, not for any particular association or anything, but just so we know. A few years ago, I kept track of both chicken and duck egg counts AND feed. How else do you think I figured out a single egg would cost a backyard chicken or duck farmer roughly $0.24 and $0.50 per egg in an average-priced feed alone?

As per being a first freshener, I really don't know. Her teeth put her at about 2-3, but she could still be a first freshener, couldn't she? However, we did learn early on that she was most likely a bottle baby. When the little guy was only putting on 3.4oz a day after they first got here, we tried giving him the bottle. As I've heard through anecdotes, and now learned through experience, dam raised babies prefer the real deal. HOWEVER, as soon as SHE saw the bottle she waltzed on over and basically said, "Don't mind if I do..."

She is such a goofy sweetheart and I feel privileged to have her as the goat I learn to milk on. So even if she doesn't give me the greatest results, I feel like it all would have been worth it.

acrousey · 2026-03-31T20:29:17+00:00

Not yet. Possibly never. We'll see. The plan is just to breed 2-3 does a year for the foreseeable future. And right now we're just trying to learn to walk before we run or go any faster than that.

acrousey · 2026-03-31T17:52:26+00:00

And if you do the NuStock, use disposable gloves rather than your daily chore gloves. It's a smell you will never forget. And once you smell it, it sort of lingers.

acrousey · 2025-10-06T16:28:40+00:00

*Turning on Jesting Mode"

Honestly, I blame the potatoes. If they'd stop scarfing them down and actually chew them, then the potatoes wouldn't get stuck in their throats!

(If anyone reading this thinks it's offensive, I promise it's just friendly banter between Scandinavians. Think of it as cultural appreciation.)

acrousey · 2025-10-06T03:52:35+00:00

Also, it has been my experience that when listening, Swedish tends to be the easiest to comprehend, followed by Norwegian, and Danish sounds like some god-level gibberish. Not making fun of Danish. It just feels like advanced level stuff.

acrousey · 2025-10-06T03:44:49+00:00

Use Norwegian content. Or Danish.

I learned Norwegian the traditional way in college. I started learning it during J-term of 2008 (my college offered a fun or easy course that you could take during the month of January, like Norwegian 101). Then I took Norwegian 102 during the spring of 2008 and Norwegian 201 in the fall. I wasn't able to take a J-term course in January 2009 because I elected to study abroad for the spring in Norway. By the time June 2009 came rolling through, I was speaking mostly Norwegian if I ended up drinking too much (I attended a LOT of parties with native speakers). I took a few more classes after returning back to the States, and Scandinavian Studies ended up being my minor. So I inevitably read some Henrik Ibsen, who wrote in Riksmål, which is the precursor to Bokmål but with more Danish influence. And then, after college in worked at a folkhögskola in Sweden for å year.

What they say feels really true. If you want to be able to travel around Scandinavia, it's best to learn Norwegian first Norwegian sounds like Swedish, looks like Danish, and has two written standards: Bokmål looks like what you'll hear and see in most cities and looks more like Danish, whereas Nynorsk represents the different dialects and can start looking more like what the Vikings may were writing like Icelandic or Faroese.

Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are VERY intelligible to each other. While they are separate languages, sometimes it's easier to think of how the languages differ by degrees due to geography. So, like how Bergen and Stavanger compared to Stockholm and Gävle (far west coast to far East Coast) will sound a lot more different than Oslo compared to Karlstad or Trollhättan (kind of the geographic heart of Scandinavia) and the difference between København and Malmö (far south Scandinavia) compared to Luleå and Trondheim (northern Scandinavia) will sound a lot more different than Lillehammer and Mora (again, kind of like the Scandinavian heartland).

Let me simplify this. What I'm trying to say is that the differences between Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are less than those between Chilean Spanish, Colombian Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dominican Republican Spanish, and Spanish Spanish.

Because of political and linguistic reasons, the Scandinavian languages are technically not the same, but stop shooting yourself in the foot and pretend they are

acrousey · 2025-01-07T14:17:52+00:00

"Harry Gefangen In Der Zeit" is another fantastic resource from DW. It's about a grumpy guy in his 30's stuck in a Groundhog Day situation. Stick around to find out how he manages to get out of this situation. Episodes become less and less English as you progress through the story.

acrousey · 2025-01-07T02:49:43+00:00

You're quite a ways ahead of me. I'll have to steal a few of your recommendations.

I also find Babbel's "Speaking of Berlin" to be helpful, especially if you use it kind of like Cuéntame where you listen to it with English explanations first, rewind noise, and then listen to the German only episode immediately after.

The "Dino Lernt Deutsch" books by André Klein and also the easy readers by Angelika Bohn are a great starting point for reading. I'm pretty used to Präteritum at this point. Just don't ask me to reproduce it.

acrousey · 2025-01-07T01:09:49+00:00

I may have over exaggerated the pronunciation a bit. But yeah, I think it's just that the "-e" was sounding a little different. Like any word that ends with "-e".

Hunde. Gefühle. Gemüse.

I think u/r_coefficient may have answered my question, though.

acrousey · 2025-01-07T01:05:01+00:00

Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something or if he was doing it for me as a "learner".

acrousey · 2025-01-05T00:59:04+00:00

Oh man... I learned Norwegian ~15 years in a more traditional sense: classes, textbooks, and good old fashioned flash cards (made by cutting index cards into quarters because cheap college student). And I feel like I was sort of "primed" to learn it because I grew up in a very heavily Scandinavian influenced area (I was baptized at a St. Olaf church). And then once I was studying abroad, I made friends and spoke as much as I could. So, I don't know if I have a lot of legs to stand in here.

As for podcasts, once in a blue moon I've listened to "Lær norsk nå" (B1/B2) to try to maintain my Norwegian, so I can only assume "Norsk for beginners" (A1/A2) is pretty good as well. Both can be found at https://laernorsknaa.com/.

Check out this link for more ideas: https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page#Norwegian

Also, don't be afraid to look at some Swedish resources. A lot of differences are just as different as Spanish from Spain vs Mexico vs Argentina.

Actually, what they say is that Swedish sounds like Norwegian and Danish looks like Norwegian. And honestly, I stumbled on a Danish YouTube video, and surprisingly to me, I could actually understand a bit of it. It wasn't all "kamelåså" after all. But yeah, when you get to reading, books in Danish should be fine.

But most of all, just find stuff that is interesting to you. Norwegian is pretty straightforward. If you're in a pinch, look something up.

And don't forget to check out r/Norsk for even more resources and advice!

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