New Girls' Shelter

After putting up the hay shelter last week, J started building a new shelter for our maiden girls. We've found that having the older pregnant girls with the younger girls can at times be a pain. One issue we've had is trouble weaning the young ones. This year we had our little ones go to Ashton Stones Alpacas for a couple weeks to help with weaning. They did wean, but we had problems even after that with Lily clinging to her mom. Another problem we've run into is that we want to make sure our pregnant moms keep their weight up. Especially Sancha can get very thin through birth and nursing her baby, so she needs plenty of food. But if we leave extra food out for her, then the younger ones (like Cafe) eat it and they put on too much weight. We think having a separate area for the pregnant moms and the young girls would help these issues. Plus, we are looking to the future when we will need that much room to hold all our girls.

We found with the shelter we put up for the girls last year that they almost never use it. Unless it's pouring rain, they hang out in the pasture or paddock. So we decided if they hardly use the shelter anyway, we don't need to go all out for one.

This is the area before:



Then the frame:





Almost done (it still needs to have trim and paint):





From our experience with the other shelters, I really think they will like this one the best. I predict they will all cush right in the entry way, chewing their cud.

My hay shelter is working out great! Even with a load of hay in there I have plenty of room:



I do still want to move all our grain inside here so that I can free up our garage. I also want to put the wagon and the wheelbarrow in there. Getting all that in order is a chore waiting for me after show season.