Housing Goats in Extremely Hot Weather

[Teckelhut]

Those of you who have goats in extremely hot areas how do you house your goats? We are headed to 108*-109* for the next 5 days. This is the hottest it will have been while I've owned goats. My goats have a 3 sided lean to for shelter and fresh water but with no breeze it's really hot!

It gets hot here on the High Desert. We have learned three key ways to help animals during the heat whether they are horses, goats, chickens or rabbits.

#1 Have water available at all times.

#2 Have shade available at all times.

#3 Do not work them, or get them worked up about anything.

#4 If you want to, box fans placed out of the reach of the animal, helps allot.

Some people are tempted to cool the water troughs down. Don't. There is a reason for this. Any animal that drinks water has to raise that water's temp to the body's core temp once they have ingested it. Which means their body produces heat by way of the energy they spend to raise the water to core temp. (Tip. If you are wanting to loss weight. Drink your water ice cold. Your body uses calories to raise that water to core temp before it can process it. While it does NOT use up a bunch of calories it still uses calories) This will actually raise the temperature of the animal. If you do need to cool the animal off, get a turkish towel, dunk it in water, and lay it on the animal. The natural evaporation "sucks" the heat off the animal. We use the towel trick, or cool coats, for dogs but it will work on all animals. Works wonders.