Lesson learned - Barn floor to avoid

[MTKitty]

Goats have been here for ten-ish days. I have learned an important lesson. Do not have a wooden floor.

I had a couple of large wooden pallets that I thought the goats would find more comfortable than the gravel pad the barn sits on.

To make them more cushy, I picked up a couple of rubber stall mats today. As I removed the bedding preparatory to placing the mats on the pallets, I realized the pallets were not allowing urine to drain away. So, ick.

Now, I don’t know if the rubber mats would be any better.

Tomorrow I will get lime for the gravel and add enough shavings and straw for a comfy sleep spot. Maybe I’ll find another use for those mats. Suggestions?

 

[SageHill]

My stalls are all SoftStall - thick padding below and solid rubber mat above. I bed with pine shavings. Works great with my sheep. I 80-90% strip it down once a week.
I love it. It’s easy to clean and no dirt to deal with.

 

[MTKitty]

What is the padding beneath your mat?

 

[Ridgetop]

Keep the rubber mats, discard the pallets. Wood soaks urine in and the odor will never leave. Rubber mats keep liquid on top instead of letting it drain into the gravel. However, they will also allow you to hose them off, use Dry Stall, shavings, and/or straw as bedding material without it getting packed into mud. You will be able to rake and shovel it off the mats more easily, and can use it in the compost pile. While you can also do that off the gravel floor you will shovel up small amounts of gravel with it as well, making your removed bedding that much heavier to deal with.

Be aware that some shavings are believed to cause mastitis in dairy goats. While I never had a case of mastitis from shavings, I also stopped using them because they became heavy to shovel after absorbing urine. When I use bedding I use straw. I mound it heavy on the sides of the pen. If there is not too much muck, I remove the mucky bits and then rake more straw from the edges into the center. Straw will keep the animals off the wet ground underneath and any manure/urine mucky spots can be removed while dry straw can be raked into the middle.

 

[SageHill]

What is the padding beneath your mat?

Yes. If I remember correctly the the padding is 2 inches thick and the rubber mat on top is 1/4 inch thick one solid piece to cover the stall - no seams.

 

[SageHill]

If you do go with something like have, I use one of those black plastic shovels to clean the stall out. That will keep the rubber nice and not cut it. I also use the typical plastic manure rake to rake aside the clean dry shavings. They are the pine shavings.