# New baby pen and hoop house pictures...



## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

This is my temporary pen for raising my kids in this year. OH! and it shows you the greenhouse, most of my barn and my new truck 










This is the kids inside the hoop house, the back tarp will come out when the kids have some size to them, otherwise it is a sauna in our humidity


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Great set up! What no aluminum trailer? Some lovely little munchkins drinking all your milk!
L


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## Terri-Lynn (Nov 7, 2007)

Nice kids...envy on the greenhouse!


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## Cotton Eyed Does (Oct 26, 2007)

Oh no. Did you take over the swimming pool spot?!! :lol :lol Looks nice. Like your truck too.

Vicki, do you attach your cattle panels to your t-posts or do you just sort of prop the cattle panels up between the t-posts and just use them for support?


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## stoneyheightsfarm (Jan 19, 2008)

I love that you have toddler toys for them to climb on--cute!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Yes they are wired, just with the really bendy stuff (alluminum likely) you use on chain link, so you can take it down really fast. I put the orange material up so the little lamancha munchkins can't get through later on. You can't believe how you can find the Little Tykes toys for cheap on Sunday afternoons when folks are trying to get rid of the stuff at their garage sales. The big one outside, it's slide is broken so I just didn't put it up, and the little slide, is actually broken at the top, but the goats don't mind  They actually sleep underneath the platform of the slide when it gets cold, fits all 10 nicely. I keep the flight kennels apart like this so the kids can jump up on them, but also sleep underneath, with 10 more being added to the pen by Monday can't have tight spots they can get in and smoother each other, this way if too many go underneath a kennel it just lifts up into the air! Another set of spotted triplet doelings born this morning, by Lipton the doe in my avatar.

Oh...and no the swimming pool is behind me over to the left...well actually my husband took these on his Iphone. Vicki


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

GO LOVELY LIPTON!


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## jcran (Feb 17, 2009)

"Welcome to El Cajon"? Are you stealing highway signs from California :biggrin?


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## IndyGardenGal (Jun 11, 2009)

Can I come play at your house? :biggrin

We're keeping our kids little tykes playhouse and toys they've outgrown for our goats. I love your green house, where did you get it (if you don't mind me asking)?


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## doublebowgoats (Mar 6, 2008)

Very nice, Vicki! I love your set-up and definitely jealous of your greenhouse!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Greenhouse is from harborfrieght.com they had a special around Christmas for $100 off, I love it, we already have salad greens going in there.

I will be moving the play area to the back when the kids are older to put them on fresh ground, then out to the junior pen after they are weaned....my husband likes this setup so well he is going to do his whelping in one just like it.

Yep I stole the sign the last week I lived in El Cajon on the way to Texas. It was meant to be, it was laying on the ground. I wasn't smart enough to just pop the rivets out of the back of the sign, and toted the whole sign and pole back to the apartment. With a red bandana hanging out of the back of my husbands panel truck  I was only 22, boy was I dumb! But I adore my sign now. Please don't tell anyone  The picture is a little left of the sign Sondra did for me that says Lonesome Doe Hotel. LOL! Vicki


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## Drycreek goats (Sep 8, 2009)

Neat set up.CANT belive the green grass and green house.We have feets of snow and and good day is +27 Tammy


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## Natural Beauty Farm (Feb 10, 2009)

Aww I love the sight of little kids feeding.


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## Faithful Crown Nubians (Dec 5, 2007)

That's a great set up!  I have two of those cattle panel/tarp shelters. The smaller of the two is used for my two bucks. The bigger one has my pigs and their feed bins/straw in it.


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Don't tell me you spent time in ElCajon? I grew up in Spring Valley and we played them for sports! 
Lee


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## LynninTX (Oct 25, 2007)

Wow Lee! I too grew up in El Cajon until 13, then lived in Lakeside & Santee... 

Funny there are 3 of us on here from that neck of the woods.


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## Theresa (Oct 26, 2007)

That is a great set up! I am going to have to get one of those hoop houses built in my baby pen. It would make feeding them so much better then the way it is now.
Theresa


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I was born in LaMesa and raised in El Cajon, did live in an apartment in Lakeside for a little while, didn't leave El Cajon area until I was 25....moved to Texas. Went to Granite Hills High School. Used to go to the Spring Valley swap meet every Saturday....those who go to farmers markets and flea markets out here have no idea how much better the swap meets were in CA! I rode horses all over Santee, and went to fun shows in Lakeside. In fact the 4H/FFA arena in Lakeside that has the upholstered seats for buyers, was built by my Dad, who bought most of the kids top selling animals, and got tired of sitting in bleachers! Back in the day  I left in 1982. I used to go back yearly, now with my mom having alsheimerz, not alot of reason to. Vicki


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Too funny! We had best horseback riding buddies in Lakeside. 
We lived right on Sweetwater lake when there were only dirt roads. I understand it is rolling subdivisions now. 
I worked at Spring Valley Roping Arena as a do anything you want me to...and ran track and cross country against all those local schools. EONS ago! The swap meet came into being about 2 years before I high tailed it for Arkysaw- that was a sad ruin of that pretty hill where we used to go parkin as teens :rofl 
Hi neighbors! Sorry to hijack having a reunion :biggrin


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## Oat Bucket Farm (Mar 2, 2009)

I lived in Santee wich isn't to far from El Cajon. I love your set and plan on doing exactly that when we move. We'll pull up with the moving truck and the critters, immediatly set up animal pens and shelters (nothing big that first day)and then once they are all settled in we will start getting the humans settled in. Luckily, we have quite a few cattle panels and t posts to take with us.


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## LLB101 (Sep 29, 2009)

Very nice!!! And look at all that sunshine! I was trying to read the signs, :lol glad someone else posted the contents. 

No one's ever had a problem with them eating the tarp? 

I made 2 from the stock panels, but I covered them with the corrugated panels on one and bamboo barrier on the other. I'm going to be needing the bamboo barrier soon for its real purpose, besides, its expensive and not meant for UV exposure, but its been under a big evergreen tree all winter. 

So, any issues with tarps? I have one that chews on EVERYTHING, sometimes even just the stock panels she'll mouth away on, and mouth on the edge of the water trough, certainly any wood etc. It seems to be a play thing, she doesn't eat the wood, and will play for a long time with the clips hanging from the gate latches. Once in awhile she'll chew thru a bungee, :lol She's 15-16 months old if that's part of it and does seem to have gotten better since bred, she's due Apr 20-ish, is in *very* good condition, and seems super healthy, just mouthy for fun bad habit.

Any other creative tarp alternatives or issues?


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## LynninTX (Oct 25, 2007)

This is a WILD thread with 4 of us from East County... 

I never lived outside El Cajon (Bostonia Elem, Greenfield jrhigh, Lakeside (El Cap 1 yr) , then Santee (Santana) until we moved to TX in 2004. 

I love your set up Vicki!!

Until yesterday we ALWAYS had our t posts clipped to the panels and the tarp over the tpost as well with socks & duct tape over the tops of the tposts....

yesterday dh put up a shelter in a hurry and did not clip and tarp is like yours between the posts & panel... I think this might work for most yards... and lots less work!

My poor goat babies have to share their toys with my toddlers since they share the same yard... LOL


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## Becky-DixieDoesAlpines (Oct 26, 2007)

I lived in Lakeside for a year!


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## tinygreenfrog (Feb 19, 2009)

love the set up! how do you attach the bottom of the kid house panels to keep them standing? whats the base i mean?

im going to build one of these.....


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Lynn I went to Greenfield also. I lived up 4th street nearly at the corner of Madison where Granite Hills High school was. There was this creepy old two story white house on the corner, we lived in the two story red house next to it with the horse arena etc... You had to be further down Madison into El Cajon, we were in the county, to go to that grade school....I went to Madison Avenue, walked to school it was so close. Lynn, I graduated Granite Hills in 75 so I am older than you, back in the day Santana was the "BAD" school, it was a very tough crowd compared to lilly white Grainte Hills and El Cajon High school...figure in 73 there was till no blacks and only one Mexican family! Talk about segragated. Valhalla opened up the year I graduated. 

Becky my sister, who lives out here now, lived down Wintergardens in Lakeside for about 20 years.


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## doublebowgoats (Mar 6, 2008)

"My poor goat babies have to share their toys with my toddlers since they share the same yard... "

Mine did too last year! They all had a blast! (I'm talking about grand children tho not my own children)

I want to know about the bottom of the hoop house also. Does it have t-posts?


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

If you look closely at the first photo, you can see the T posts, then from the inside you can't see them because the tarp is sandwiched between the cattle panels that are wired together and the T posts. Those are old cattle panels that have some wire on them already, you can see it up close. The cattle panels are only connected to the hooped cattle panels at the bottom. To take it apart, we just move the fence (we only put the posts in far enough to hold it up, not so it's hard to pull out, we have the dogs to patrol so we don't have to make this predator tight...undo the wires at the bottom and walk the whole hoop out, pull out the T posts and move it. AFter the season you just take off the tarp, fold it up and store it, take apart the cattle panels and use them for something else. The walk gate is nothing more than a cyclone fence gate that was taken off a job by my husband. Vicki


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## LynninTX (Oct 25, 2007)

Yes, I'm young I was Santana '85 and dh was Santana '78..... 

In El Cajon I lived on Marline between Second and Naranca (think 1 block south of the PO)... 

Such a long time ago...


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Well yup- ya'll is yungins. Class of 70 here from Bonita Vista. They changed the district lines and took some of us Mount Miguel kids to a brand new school right across the street from Southwestern. We got to use their campus for library and sports! 
Very long time ago! It's trashed now sorry to say- no more lemon groves or gorgeous eucalyptus groves and my secret canyon is full of rubble from road building...whaaaa...progress. It was a superior place to grow up wild.

If you stood in the SV Swapmeet and looked across to the next hill over- our house and 2 others were the only things there when my parents bought the land in 1957. 3 houses in that whole area. Delightful.
This photo shows the valley before the highway and subdivisions. Where the shadow of the tree is the hill drops off radically and into the valley where cattle used to graze from the one farm in the area. over the hill in the distance is Lemon Grove. Just to the right of this and out of the frame would be the swap meet. Should we move this to off topic? 
Lee
no that's not me 

[attachment deleted by admin]


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## prairie nights (Jan 16, 2009)

Vicki, 

thank you so much for posting the photos, it is a tremendous help to have a good visual both of the outside and inside. Let me know if I got this right. 

You drive the posts into the ground on one side and attach the panels on the bottom only to the posts. Then arch the panels and drive posts in on the other side and attach the same way. 
Cover with tarp, I guess two tarps, one for the back and one for the sides? Can you share the tarp dimensions if you remember??

Thank you ! 

Jana


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

When the panels are bent, what is the width inside the enclosure? I just love it, and we're getting ready to build on for the older kids, so we can move them out and grt the baby pen ready for the next wave of kids!

Tamera


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## Feral Nature (Oct 26, 2007)

I love your baby goats! Nice! My second favorite thing is your greenhouse. So I will swing by and pick out a few doelings and load that greenhouse up and come on back here to my place. I'll bring you a donkey in exchange...and an old duck.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Diane won't trade the greenhouse  but a baby goat for a halter broke donkey...you betcha! 

Cattle panels are 16 feet long, so when you hoop them make sure you hoop them to your heighth so you don't clunk your head going in and out of it. I do have to stoop on the sides, but even with shavings in the bottom I can stand upright in the middle. Each cattle panel you wire together to make the hoop adds just less than 4 feet to your house, mine is 4 (because you have to overlap the panels to wire them together for strength) 15 feet long, because I am 5'8" tall my hoop house is 7 feet wide inside, if you were shorter, I have mine about 6 feet in the center, or younger  than you hoop house can be wider.

Yes we drive 3 T posts into the ground, don't go crazy with this if you want it portable. With the cattle panels wired together you just push it up against the T posts and it wants to bend in a hoop, then holding it in place, another person simply pounds 3 more T posts into it, and it springs between the two. Put the tarp on next. I just bought whatever wallmart had that was 16 feet long, and got 2 of them and overlapped them, mostly because the right side facing the barn of this hoop house is north so it could use the tarp going all the way to the bottom. If it was good weather you only need the tarp to be over the top for shade and rain shield. A simple 8 x 10 cheap tarp is at the back of the hoop house and is just secrued with clamps because it will come down in a few weeks when the kids are bigger and the temperature is high at night. I use those big springy and small ones too, clamps for lots of things, and also use zip ties, this way everything comes apart easily. And it can't poke you like wire. Vicki


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

Thank you Vicki,
I'm only 5ft tall so mine won't have to be as tall as yours. I've got to get these girls moved over into the other pen before the new babies are born. Almost 8wks old and already 48lbs. I have 4 more does left to kid starting in 10 days, gotta get all this done.

Tamera

What kind of big and small springy clips are you talking about?


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

Omg- a CA reunion, only I'm still in CA :laughcry I grew up in San Diego, lived in Terra Santa, National City & even Imperial Beach for a while..wherevert here was Navy housing. For a while my dad lived in Lemon Grove. We used to romp all over the countryside, 4 wheeling where there are now houses. We moved back to near family farm here in the north in 1985. The flea markets down there ROCK, the only thing I've ever seen close in my worldly travels were the markets in Italy. I'm sure Vicki got the sign in a scavenger hunt, or on a dare


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## Feral Nature (Oct 26, 2007)

Vicki McGaugh Tx Nubians said:


> Diane won't trade the greenhouse  but a baby goat for a halter broke donkey...you betcha!


haha! Halter breaking a donkey is a lot different than halter breaking a horse! They are smarter, stronger, and have a lot more time on their hands (they live twice as long, why not?). I have a 20 year old gelding that I used to ride long distances and ride in parades. Trained him myself, with the help of the children. He is worth a fortune to me. Priceless. He is an old cripple now. The jack hamstringed him several times and he, the gelding, is all delapidated. People around here use donkeys to break steers to the halter. They tie them up together and the steer is drug around for a few weeks by the donkey til the steer gives up and goes where it is told. I used to get ahold of the newborns and get a halter on them the first few days of life. But on this big of an acreage, with the woods and all, the jennies hide their babies for weeks sometimes and they are wild when they finally see people. I have had too many years of busting ass to do it anymore. I have busted up both of my knees doing it. So if people want baby donkeys, they have to buy the pair right away, or buy the bred jenny. No way am I getting this 54 year old body out there working my herd of donkeys! :crazy


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I raised two rescue Jennies from the Black Beauty Ranch so know how smart they are. I don't' want to ride or anything like that, just want them to lead so I can let them eat the grass around the farm, I should never have gotten rid of my two, it's one of my regrets.

Tamera the clamps on the second picture that is holding the tarp on the panel. I use little ones to hold my feed buckets on my milkstand so the does can't slide them off, use them to clip lambars to cattle panels in the infant pens in the milkroom, to secure heat lamps in several places so they can't fall...I even use them for the hoop houses in the garden to hold the plastic open or closed. Bungee cords, clamps, zip ties and a cordless screw gun is all you need to conquer the world  Vicki


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

Thanks Vicki,
Just wanted to know exactly what i was looking for. Hey, I was born & raised in Ontario, Ca. Raised my kids in Fontana, Ca. Escaped
16yrs ago to Ms. and haven't looked back since. LOL


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

I was born in L.A....does that count for the reunion? We lived in Canoga Park and Woodland Hills while my dad went to USC and then we moved when I was 2 1/2. Then as an adult, I lived in Seaside (used to be Fort Ord but they closed it, near Monterey) '96-'98.

Back on topic, I need to show these pics to dh!


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Heck Yah it counts! Squidge is the LA boy here. Surfed all up and down that coast. 
Ranged a little too far south and I nabbed him!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Hey everyone, please add your pictures of your hoop houses to the end of this thread, I am going to erase the chatter in it and put it up in goatkeeping 101. Thanks.


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## Candy (Jun 4, 2009)

Vicki McGaugh Tx Nubians said:


> Hey everyone, please add your pictures of your hoop houses to the end of this thread, I am going to erase the chatter in it and put it up in goatkeeping 101. Thanks.


Here is our hoop house. We used two cattle panels and 8 T-Posts and lots of duck tape. We used two different sized tarps, one for the top and one for the back. Probably could have used one larger tarp for the whole thing.

[attachment deleted by admin]


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

For those of you with greenhouse envy you can make a hoop house with 2 layers of clear 6 mil plastic in contractor widths from Lowes and run one 250 watt heat lamp or a tiny electric heater or heat strips on just the coldest days and nights so you can have a place to start cole crops or raise spinach and lettuce. The only tricky part is setting up an entry that you can really close to hold the heat but you can use gator clips on one side for that. Getting it closed up tight is the key and then making sure to vent on a sunny day so you don't steam everything. 
Lee


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

I have to put up a new insulated hoop house for kidding next week, then I'll take pictures and post them.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Thanks Michelle, Sondra should be able to add it to the thread when we move it. Vicki


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