Goat & Chicken Shelter Update

Well, despite my excellent craftsmanship and brilliant ingenuity [sarcasm], I had to swallow my pride and rebuild the roof on the goat/chicken shelter.  The green-house style roof was acting like... well it was acting like a green-house.  The interior of the shelter was extremely humid and water droplets were constantly falling.  Additionally, all of the flying insect that wandered into the shelter, flew up and simply got stuck.  The plastic sheeting had no venting on the top and trapped all the bugs.  The chickens didn't mind, but the goats basically refused to go inside and I don't blame them.  There were thousands of flies and gnats just buzzing around inside.  I gave it a couple days to see if the insect infestation would falter, but it never seemed to get any better.  I cut a couple vents in the side of it, but all the bugs wanted to do was go up and the vents were pretty much useless.

I opted to rip off the plastic sheeting and install corrugated plastic panels, much like what I used on the previous goat shelter.  I also decided to create a vent, at the peak of the roof, which ran the length of the shelter.  It took an entire day; I did not finish until the sun had gone down and it was completely dark, but I am pleased with the results.  The best part is that I have no more flying insect issues and the goats seem to love the shelter now.

The chickens made the new shelter "home" and appeared completely indifferent to the bugs or the roof construction.  The first day they all went over to the now empty spot in the field where the old shelter had been and laid all of their eggs in a pile in the grass.  When I worked on the roof, I pulled the shelter out of the field and back up to the garage.  This really messed with the little pea brains of the chickens.  They kept going back and forth between the shelter (by the house) and the pasture.  We ended up having eggs laid all over the place: several scattered around the lawn, one on the patio, one in the shelter, and a couple down by the goats.  With the shelter back in place, they are all laying in the nesting boxes again, as I had hoped, and are much more content overall.

My next project will be to cut in a couple doors so the children can access water, food, and eggs from outside the shelter.  I am just looking forward to being done with this thing...  I hope it lasts longer than the last one.