They say that necessity is the mother if invention. That is often how our redneck engineering has come to pass. We live in Southern Arizona, so there is a lot of sandy soil, and very little grass. Therefore we bring in hay and feed, and grow fresh in container gardens in the pens. The problem is that when we clean pens, a lot of dirt gets shoveled out with the poop, and the ground level in the pens has slowly but steadily lead to lower ground in the goat pens. The chicken areas have easily had their holes filled over time, but the goats aren't so easy. We have tried several "scoop" solutions over the years, with this being our last incarnation...
Yep- hardware cloth over a horse pooper scooper, because the pellets would go right through otherwise. The problem with the scoop was you had to largely shake the scoop to get the dirt out, and that was another cloud of dust and allergy issues to deal with. So with Bailey getting ready to leave for summer, and kidding season almost upon us, Bailey and I sat at morning milking with a topic on our minds looking for something better. What else to do but raid the scrap pile?
There was a piece of hardware cloth (that stuff is awesome) used as a temporary fix on a fence panel that Wyatt and I are due to fix before that temp pen gets used again. So we didn't need it anymore, and procured it. Then to the woodpile. These boards seemed like a nice start. There were too more that size, but they would not work due to the size of the hardware cloth. So Bailey headed off to the power tools.
She was a little concerned at one point about the edges and wood, but this isn't staying in the pen, only being used for muck. We are good with this. Here is how the "tool" came out.
Here it is in use. My milking doe, Mama Lulu wanted to help. Or be quality control. Or just be cuddled along the way, you never quite know with her!
This area of the pen- the doe barn has long been the worst. Which is awful, since their food is here! As we began shoveling large amounts of loose dirt out to get the poop, we confirmed just how low the dirt would go, and decided to add a concrete brick under each end of the hay feeder to bring a little stability and give us an idea where the level was when we finished.
Mama Lulu loves to ham it up for the camera, and started playing peekaboo from behind the hay feeder.
When we run the dirt throuh, the dirt falls down and leaves us with poop on top of the mesh. Then we dump the mesh into the muck wagon. If I had it to do over, one end would have a larger spot than this for the muck to run down to make it less messy dumping. Live and learn. But we did much better at leaving the dirt in the pen.
Here we are, part way done, with Versie checking things out.
They also liked to walk wherever we just cleaned and leave us more work to do!
Silver and Glory wanted to get in on the action. They wanted to help spread out the piles of dirt. Too bad they didn't want to carry them back to the doe barn!
Lulu saw the camera, had to scratch her chin as the sun was goig down behind her.
Goofy girl!
Here we were almost done. We will never get every single piece of poop and leave the dirt behind, but this worked much better! Score one for the Patriot's Dream girls and a little Saturday ingenuity!
The does ended up wanting two yellow "ribbons" to decorate for memorial day. I offered them their red white and blue ones from the shed, but they liked these from their hay bales and the yellow that even though we pay our respects this weekend to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, we don't forget those presently with boots on the ground while we are here at home.
Wyatt has decided he is going to show pygmy goats as well next year. He always said that he would as soon as they let him show bucks, which they won't, but he rather likes little McAllie. So Bailey taught him to trim hooves last night.
Well, that made for a productive day for us, even if we did want to get more done. What redneck engineering have you tried? Care to share with us?
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