Farm Sitters: When the humans are away, making sure the goats play

Farm sitters are something almost everyone needs at some point. Animals like to have a routines, goats are no different. They also require routine care, these things usually go hand in hand. What do you do when you must leave your goats? Sometimes friends and family can pitch in, but there are also other options such as professional farm sitters.

It is best to have a plan before you need it. My lifestyle I wouldn’t often need to leave unexpectedly, but emergencies do happen. You don’t want to be cobbling together farm care last minute if you can avoid it.

Who do you know that could be farm sitters?

The first thing to think about is who you know that might be able to help out. Is your whole household leaving or can someone else do the chores that normally doesn’t? Is there a neighbor that can stop by? A goat person friend? Ask who your friends’ use.

One thing I have done in the past and plan to do in the future is to hire someone to help regularly with farm chores who would be able to farm sit when needed. This can be more costly because you are paying someone regularly but when it is time for them to step in they know the chores and the animals.

How reachable will you be?

When choosing someone to watch your farm consider how reachable you will be. These days it isn’t very often when I will be completely out of contact, but in the past there were times. The reason this is an important question is the skill of the farm sitters watching your farm.

Most people can be taught to do routine chores, but it is a different situation when an emergency happens. If the person doing the chores is not experienced in goat care you will want back-up for them and if you are completely out of contact then you might want them to be very experienced themselves. I have coached a goat birth from a work dinner previously, but now plan my breeding schedule so that can’t happen.

How long will you be gone?

The length of your trip is another very important thing to keep in mind. If you are just gone one night or a long weekend it can be a lot easier than for multiple weeks or even months. If you are gone on night you just need someone to look for acute illness or injury, but if it is a couple weeks they need to be looking for more. Routine care such as hoof trimming or parasite treatment comes in as well if it is going to be quite some time.

What is your budget?

Ultimately it comes down to budget. I have traded farm chores before as well as paid people. I haven’t used professional farm sitters before, but suspect I will eventually. What you do might be entirely based on your financial situation. The type of trip might also come in, in an emergency community might step in and help. Mine community gathers around in times of need and likely yours isn’t any different.

Can you adjust your chores?

One of the things that I appreciate when I am preparing for a trip is it really forces me to think about how I take care of my animals and if things can be simplified. Sometimes thinking through the steps causes me to make improvements that I keep upon my return. 

There have been times where my goats got a daily walk, if I was traveling I would eliminate this

Reducing milking

The biggest way to easy the chore burden at my farm is to simplify the milking. There are different milking schedules that can help with this and reducing the amount of animals to be milked is another way. I have gone to once a day milking previously prior to a trip and I have also dried up goats that were not going to easily earn their milk stars that year to improve things. I also have one goat that is very difficult with strangers who I have dried up to make chores easier. This options really depend on your goat goals and how recently the does have kidded if it makes sense.

Baby care

If you have kids around and are leaving simplifying the baby care is sometimes an option. If I knew I was going to leave when kids were not weaned yet I might do milk sharing and not put them completely on a bottle. Using a lambar instead of bottles can also simplify as well. In some cases you might even be able to put the kids back with their mothers or leave them with their mothers if they are quite young.

Just be thoughtful when you adjust in these ways, I attempted to simplify while I was gone last year and lost two kids to Floppy Kid Syndrome. If you have especially young kids you should consider the experience of the person doing the goat care even more.

Hay feeding

This depends on your set-up, but we have pretty big hay feeders. This is especially the case with the bucks as we were able to greatly improve our goat math situation and only have six right now.

Recently when I left town I put a 100 pound bale of timothy in their feeder and just had 2 flakes of alfalfa be added daily and the hay fluffed around. This lasted more than my entire trip and made it easier for the person doing animal care as they are allergic to grass.

My does need hay daily, so there isn’t too much I can do to change this. There isn’t really a way to add more hay feeders and I’m not planning to reduce the size of the herd too much more. I do stage the hay as close to the feeders as possible to reduce trips.

In addition to our goats we have a couple cattle that also need hay. I had been peeling chunks off of round bales for them, but this required climbing through a small space. For the length of my trip they were fed timothy which is much more expensive than the local hay I trade for, but the shenanigans to get to the hay were much less.

This hay feeder can hold more than a full three string bale

Less stops

One additional thing to think about is the number of stops required. Hay feeding is one example where if animals can be hayed less times per day or per week. What other stops can you improve on? In the winter I usually only have a buck and a doe herd, but starting with kidding season the number of groups grows until it peaks over the summer. Each water, each hay station, each special care requires more time. I think through if I really need all those stops to simplify chores. This has included working harder to move kids along before a trip as well.

What are your absolute requirements?

The biggest thing with thinking through your needs are what are your absolute requirements. For us it is that someone needs to be on the property overnight. I appreciate someone having an ear out just in case of trouble.

Our barn cats also have a curfew which is a choice we have made. We call them in overnight, so someone needs to be home to make sure that happens.

It will be okay

It is easy to fret about your livestock, but if you have a good plan generally it will be okay. Maybe one person can’t do all the things you need and you have to cobble together a few different options. For me this sometimes means the person feeding and the person milking aren’t the same. It might mean that the person doing the chores isn’t the same person over the whole trip. Different farm sitters for different tasks is a reasonable solution, though it can be harder to synchronize everything.

Whatever it is if you have a plan, realize you can’t plan for everything but you can try. We have a whiteboard in our barn where we list all the possible phone numbers someone might need for back-up. They have not been used but they are there.