FARMERS are being urged to rethink traditional practices and embrace the adoption of raised pallets for goat housing. In recent years, a handful of goat farmers have switched over from concrete or mall flooring to raised slotted goat houses as a sustainable type of housing to offer their livestock security at night and protection from weather elements and parasites.

“Being a farmer myself and having challenges purchasing materials to actually construct a goat house, pallets would have been much cheaper, and it is somehow more attractive in some ways and more available than our regular lumber, which, if utilised in the right way, could do as good a job as our regular two by four and one by three,” said Maurice Anderson, the Rural Agriculture Development Authority’s (RADA) livestock officer for Kingston and St Andrew.

He explained to the Jamaica Observer that the goat housing materials are affordable, ranging between $640,000 and $700,000 for materials only. “That cost, though, can be reduced if farmers actually use some amount of round wood and cut the lumbar for their upright and cross sections. We actually use these materials because they are more durable, and you would want to put up a house that is sturdy enough to protect your animals from predators and at least slow down these thieves,” he said. “We are basically using pallets. I have seen pallets being sold for $300 per pallet, and that may vary up to $800,” he added.

Anderson has been charged with assisting the Sustainable Agriculture in the Caribbean (SAC) Project, led by the Canadian Government, to build goat housing for farmers and educate them on its benefits. These include offering an added layer of protection against ground-dwelling predators like dogs and rodents. It can also make it more challenging for internal and external parasites to infest the goats. This can lead to reduced reliance on chemical treatments and healthier animals. “They are not now going out there to graze where that is where they normally come in contact with a lot of worm eggs; these worms do their jobs through a cycle. So you will break that cycle by having your animals in a setting like this; once they defecate, their faeces will fall through the slotting door, and it will now be on the ground, so they will now be coming in contact with little or no faeces, and it is through the faces that this worm cycle prolongs,” Anderson explained.

It will also allow for better airflow, reducing humidity and the accumulation of odours. With slotted flooring for faeces to drop below, the risk of disease transmission will be reduced, improving sanitation and animal comfort. Cleaning and sanitation also become more manageable when the goat housing is elevated. Anderson suggests that the slotted floor should be raised, about five feet, ideally, or between three and six feet, for a person to comfortably fit under the house to clean manure.

Under the SAC Project, the pallets are supplied and Anderson makes the houses, but the intention is to train farmers, demonstrating how to build their own goat house. “Once we can assist these farmers in constructing better housing, then we will be eliminating a number of other things. Normally what they would do is put up a 12 by 8 house; they would give it to a farmer at the end of the training; they would identify young potential farmers, and they would donate it to one,” he told to the Business Observer. On display at the 2023 Denbigh Agricultural Industrial and Food Show was a much larger model, a 20 by 18 goat house, which Anderson said was the intention of the SAC Caribbean to donate to a 4H Club to facilitate training.