If you need a cheap way to make a shelter for your goats, check out our plans for a DIY pallet barn for goats! When a tree fell on our house, necessitating a new roof to be built, we asked our roofers if we could keep the pallets from the shingles. They did us one better and dropped off a bushel of pallets for us to use!
With only five pallets, we were able to make a three and a half sided pallet barn for our Nigerian dwarf goats. There are a few other materials needed besides the pallets.
Materials:
- pallets
- 2x4s (5 four foot sections- and 2 eight foot sections-optional)
- 4×4 post
- screws
- roofing material
- ply wood (optional)
The setup of the pallets, the way we did it, is two on the back, one on each side and one covering half of the front with a wide opening. We used the two by fours to fasten the pallets together, but this is optional. You can also trim the ends of the pallets to force the support wood of each pallet to butt up to the other pallet and screw them together. The two-by-fours offer extra support and negated having to trim the edges of the pallets.
Next, we made the front “door” hinged so that we could clean the barn out easier. The roofing material we used is corrugated metal. We’ve made a small structure in the past with corrugated plastic, but those darn naughty goats jumped on the roof and broke it! A two-by-four is used across the front and back for structural purposes and to attach the roof to. We also used a 4×4 post for more structural support in the center of the front. A 2×4 would work here as well.
Pallets are typically heat-treated for weather-proofing purposes, but using a Thompson’s Water Stain or other sealer to further protect the wood would not be a bad idea.
This structure is good for 3 seasons or warm climates as is. It’s probably ok for North Carolina, but I wanted to shore it up a little for the winter. We used sheets of plywood on the inside of the structure to block the wind. The plywood can be removed in the summer to allow more airflow and replaced in the winter. These extra steps are optional, like I said, and with the price of lumber as it is, it might be less of an option for a cost-effective barn.
Another option for shoring up the goat barn on the cheap, is to pry pallet wood from additional pallets and use that to plug the “holes” in structural pallets. We also used the extra corrugated metal on the “door” of the barn for additional protection from the weather.
We put a seat on the inside so the goats can get off the ground if they want to. Our goats love the structure, well as much as I think goats love anything. In good weather, we can find them snoozing on their spools, but in rain or wind–they hightail it into the barn!
There you go! An easy DIY barn for your goats! It was the main structure we had for our goats until we built the birthing stalls, also out of pallets! Stay tuned for that post!
If you’re interested in learning what you’ll need for your goats, check out my earlier post.
