Barn Work...Cont'd

In an effort to make my barn more, well, animal friendly, we have been making changes to the barn.  Again.  First we added a wall next to the minis pen.

The only spot left available in the barn is that space left to the wall and that's where we store the hay.  So when this guy arrived yesterday with his monthly delivery,

the minis wouldn't have a free buffet.

On the opposite side we extended the lamb pen and moved the lambs out and made it the new maternity/nursery pen.

Don't know why it seems bigger than the old one as it is the same size but they seem to have more room.

The new lamb pen has also gained a bit more leg space.

Visibly missing is the other black lamb.  I decided she was plenty big enough to join the adult ewes.  This is her next to her mother.

Lastly, we moved the goats into the end horse stall and installed a separate pen for Caesar, the billy goat.

Being the only male and dominate goat, some of the females weren't getting their share.  On top of that he seemed to enjoy ramming them into the walls of the stall.  Thinking we may have some pregnant goats among them, I figured this couldn't be good.  So he has been separated and the girls can now co-exist peacefully

In order for all this shifting around to come about, we had to move all the winter straw which we had stored in the barn to the loft.  Now the thing about my barn is it may be pretty but it ain't to practical.  The loft is a good example of that impracticality.  It's huge with plenty of storage space but lacks any decent way of getting something up there.  Except this 90 degree flight of stairs on the outside of the barn..

What's visibly missing from the outside of this barn is a pulley so I rigged up a quicky makeshift one and when that didn't work we used old-fashioned horse power.  Or in our case, mom power.  We hooked a bale to the end of a rope and the other end tied around my waist.  Then my boy went back and forth to the barn getting the next bale and hooking it up while up above on the loft porch Farm Girl pulled them up with her bare hands while I pulled the majority of the weight by walking back into the loft and hauling the bale up.  It took all day but we finally got the majority of them up into the loft with this method with the exception of about 5 bales which we left for topping up in the barn. It was a lot of back breaking work but this setup works better for me and the animals.  Now everyone has a permanent winter pen where they can stay nice and warm over this long and cold winter.

 This really should be the last of redo's in the barn as there really is nowhere else to expand.