# Hoop House/Shelters?



## KozaGirl (Jan 27, 2011)

I need help...
DH and I are trying to come up with a shelter plan for our dairy girls that we can agree on...
We used our EZ Up canopy to start with for a temporary rain shelter...I tried to tell DH that the wind would pick it up... hmm.... it blew out into the pasture and wrinkled like a piece of paper 2 days later... he thought if we got another one and tied it down with T-posts that this one would stay, however he wanted to put it in the corner where our mare is penned up next to. I questioned that she might chew on it... well the next day the entire corner was ripped. So there went canopy #2 down the drain...
We have a large tarp our 2 6 x 12 dog kennels (which are our kid pen and buck pen temporarily). We had some very high winds the other day and the wind ripped the grommets right out of the tarp on the entire top part of the pens, so now it just flaps up and down in the wind, and the goats HATE that noise.
So today when I mentioned a hoop house- with the cattle panels and tarps, DH is insistent that we will have the same problem- that the strong winds we get here will rip the grommets right out of there, and we will be back to flapping tarps again.
Both of us are very anal about stuff looking good and being clean, etc... beyond the extreme, I guess you could say... but we aren't made of money either... so does anyone have any other suggestions we might try? And just to add, there is a possibility that we will be moving later this year, so whatever we have, it needs to be portable, or easy to take apart and take with us...
HELP!! :bang :tearhair :groan :deadhorse


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## Guest (Apr 16, 2011)

Hello Diana, I have had a hoop house up for three yrs now and the wind has not ripped the tarp off.. but we secured it very good by getting a large enough tarp to make sure the ends folded inside the hoop house and secured with bungees.... I have to replace the tarp this yr because of sun, rain and normal weather and we get some pretty high winds here in Michigan.. if done right they look neat and nice.. easy to put up too.. takes an hour with two people....


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## KozaGirl (Jan 27, 2011)

I may have found a solution, and if anyone has any input on these, it would be nice to hear too...
I found someone who has some aluminum calf huts with a sliding front half door... they are 4 X 7 for $150. They have probably been sitting in a barn for years, but appear to not be beat up at all... does anyone else use these? They are asking $150 each...
I would bring them home and paint them.


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## Laverne (Apr 4, 2010)

Those calf huts sound pretty good to me, I'd pick some up if I came across some at that price. The plastic ones are about 450.00 or so. Aluminum will last forever and you could probably re coup your money on them if you make something more permanent and don't need them. I pick up Rubbermaid, used, slide lid sheds and they are about the same size, a little smaller, and the goats really like them.


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## Horsehair Braider (Mar 11, 2011)

You could haunt Craig's List for used dog kennels or houses. I've used old dog houses for my goats before and it worked out pretty good. 

On the hoop house made of cattle panels, I had some of those for years, and as long as you have them staked down REALLY well, and as long as your tarp fits and you can get it really tight, they work fantastic. The tarps would last for years, as noted above. The trick is to have them tight enough they do not flap. They look pretty good too. 

Whatever you have, stake it down far more than you think is necessary. We have horrid winds here at certain times of the year - it can snap trees right off - and I've seen some pretty big barns blown down. Better safe than sorry and you can always pull up the stakes when you move.


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

I guess I am the only one that failed with hoop houses with tarps. Went through two tarps in one season and finally gave up. The goats chewed the tarps up and the wind didn't help even though they were secured with bungee cords and did not flap.

I would get the calf hutches. I have the plastic type hutches and I love them. They were $267 each at TSC. 
Why would you paint the aluminum hutches? More work and with my luck the goats would eat the paint off.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

Cattle panel shelters are great, but with just a little more investment of money, you could buy four 4x4 posts, plant them in the ground and put up osb or plywood or whatever siding you wanted on the sides. Paint or not. Will not blow over in the wind. 

I do have cattle panel shelters. They work and are easy, but the tarps do need replacing every so often. Mine have never blown away. But, unless looking for shelter that is only temporary, like you would need if building a big barn but just needed something in the interim, you can't beat the cattle panel shelters. But, the calf hutches would last longer. I'd raise those up with a floor though so water does not seep under.


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## Cotton Eyed Does (Oct 26, 2007)

I have 2 of the hoop houses with the silver heavy duty tarps on them for the goats and I have a rain shelter made of it in back for the horses. You have to pull the tarps tight and we use zip ties to secure the tarps down tight. We still have to replace the tarps about every year and a half or so because they start to deteriorate in the sunshine.


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## lonestrchic23 (Jan 7, 2011)

Anyone have good plans for the cattle panel shelters? I've been considering doing one for my girls, but I want a reliable plan to follow so I do it correctly the first time.  Really need another shelter, and I think the cattle panel shelter would work out well...

Wanted calf hutches, but they are $300+ around here.


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## Rose (Oct 26, 2007)




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## Horsehair Braider (Mar 11, 2011)

:laughcry That's hilarious - those bad goats! :biggrin

One of the reasons my hoop house stood up so well was because I built it right next to a very stout welded pipe fence that I had pulled no-climb horse wire around. One side of my cattle panels was right against the base of that very stout fence. The goats did jump against it - you know how they are - but no way could they collapse it. Mine was 10 panels long, and the end of it had my chickens. The goats used the front part. The part that started where the chickens were, had a framed in wall and door, and this too added to the rigidity of the structure. Yes, the tarps had to be replaced from time to time, but in the meantime I was saving money so I could build a *real* barn. 

I had a couple of smaller ones, and these I built by strongly wiring the cattle panel to that welded pipe fence with the no-climb horse wire. I would wire it on one end, so the whole hoop would be wired right to the fence. I set mine up so that the two ends of the panel were about 10' apart, more or less. I generally used two panels for these smaller ones. Once the first one was firmly anchored to the ground I would wire it to the fence real well, then put up the next panel, stake it down, and wire it to the first one real well. Then I would wire the tarp on. I used baling wire, of course. It's real important to get a tarp the right dimensions, and that can be tough... the panels are 16' long so that should be one dimension of your tarp. For me, it worked OK to have a tarp smaller; but a larger one was just an invitation to the wind to blow it down. 

One of the benefits for me was I could do this by myself. My husband is a paramedic and a fire fighter, and he is often gone on long shifts. I have to be able to do things by myself, and I can build a hoop shelter all on my own. Of course my *real* barn that I now have is totally awesome and makes a hoop shelter look silly, but it's sure nice to be able to put one of those up in one day and have time left over!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Here is my infant goatling pen from last year. By using T posts on the sides you can get the sides of the hoop much straighter so no goats on the top! This year the yard is much bigger since the March kids will occupy the barn stall, the kids born in May will get the hoop house for most of the summer.


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## Laverne (Apr 4, 2010)

I got some rubber EPDM pond liner, off Craigslist, that stuff lasts about 40 years. I am going to see how that works. Then definitely beef up the sides with fence posts and then even put up some more panels around it for a fence so there's no temptation for goats to bounce off the sides like a trampoline.

Vicki, what a beautiful bunch of babies, that's quite a sight.


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

Wish I had taken a picture of my tarps in use. My goats chewed them to pieces in short order. Still have the panel out there against one fence with T posts all around. DH said he was going to get some kind of siding at the lumber yard and cover it so we leave it for now. The yearlings like to lay in it even with no cover. Perhaps my goats are a little slow. They eat their cover and then pretend it is there. (they have other shelter, by the way).


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## Oat Bucket Farm (Mar 2, 2009)

We built one for the bucks last year and it is still working great. We moved it the other day to a shadier area because it was getting too warm in there. It even survived the 60 mph wind gusts we had the day before yesterday.


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