A new home for kids

LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — When Seth Loudenbeck and his dad, Steve, needed a better place to house the youngest members of their growing herd, they decided to build a nursery. Housing all their female kids under one roof since March 2024, the new nursery is giving these future does the best possible start.

“We kept milking more goats, and it got to be too much for the two of us,” Seth said. “We had more kids to take care of and needed a better, more efficient facility.”

Equipped with good ventilation and automatic feeding, the nursery has improved kid health and overall efficiency at Loudenbeck Farms Dairy Goats LLC. Kids have unlimited access to milk replacer through an automatic feeder, helping the young goats to grow bigger, faster.

The Loudenbecks milk about 450 goats near Lake Geneva with plans to milk 700 by fall. Goats are milked twice a day in a double-14 parlor with 28 units. The Loudenbecks have a full-time employee who milks six days a week and one part-time employee who milks on Sunday afternoons.

“My dad and I milk Sunday mornings,” Seth said. “That’s our opportunity to get our eyes on the goats a little more, and it is when we do a lot of our breeding protocols and dry offs.”

Seth’s uncle, Matt, also helps on the farm, which has been in the Loudenbeck family since 1950. The Loudenbecks milked cows until 2003 and began milking goats in 2013. The farm’s commercial herd is primarily Saanens and Alpines. The Loudenbecks also have a small show herd of registered Nubians and registered Alpines.

Prior to building the nursery, kids were housed in various buildings, including the milking parlor. Growth of the herd and a desire to improve kid health were major motivators for building a nursery. The nursery has also enabled the Loudenbecks to incorporate an automatic feed-er, which Seth said was a huge benefit.

Previously, they fed a couple of hundred kids on nipple buckets. Now, kids start on bottles and are usually on the auto feeder before reaching 4 days old. The feeder can accommodate up to eight nipples — one for each pen. Seth said the 100% free-choice feeding system allows kids to drink as much as they want 24 hours per day.

“Each goat probably eats 6-10 times per day,” he said. “They’re eating 6-8 ounces multiple times daily now versus 20-25 ounces twice a day on a bucket. Five-week-old goats are drinking upwards of 150 ounces per day. They grow a lot faster on the auto feeder, and we get away with weaning them earlier than we did in the past.”

Goats are weaned around 7 weeks old. They are fed a starter pellet until 5 weeks of age before transitioning to a grower textured grain mix.

The nursery also features in–floor heat, and Seth said they no longer need to use heat lamps because the kids are always warm.

Maintaining a stable temperature in the barn is important to the Loudenbecks. Two large ceiling fans run continuously for air circulation while exhaust fans on timers run 4-6 times per hour to pull in fresh air. If the temperature is above 53 degrees, the exhaust fans remain on. In the summer, the doors on each end are opened to achieve good airflow.

“Ventilation is a key factor for kid health and an area we focused on when building this nursery,” Seth said.

Seth also attributes continuous access to milk as an important health contributor.

“The kids are much healthier,” he said. “They’re also quiet. I like that because it means they’re happy.”

A reduction in labor is another benefit of the automatic feeder.

“A couple hours spent managing and feeding kids is better than 4-6 hours feeding kids,” Seth said. “It’s a huge time saver, but it’s still a lot of work. I clean the auto feeder every morning, taking it apart to clean the hoses and nozzles. I’m also always on the lookout, making sure everyone looks like they are healthy and eating. Every morning, I start in the nursery where I spend a minimum of 1.5 hours.”

A well-lit space is another feature Seth said makes it easier to care for the kids.

“I wanted to make sure I could look at any pen and see what’s going on,” he said.

Built to accommodate future growth, the nursery is 26- by 64-feet long. Each pen can hold 15-20 kids. The Loudenbecks strive to keep numbers below the barn’s 160-kid capacity. Currently, the nursery has 70 kids. Pens are bedded with straw and pressure washed and sanitized between groups.

With the transition to the nursery, the Loudenbecks have shifted from a seasonal breeding schedule to a more spread-out kidding interval. Their goal is to breed and freshen 40-60 does per month.

“There will be no more big slam of kids, which will help keep the nursery at a lower capacity,” Seth said. “Kids do better when they’re not crowded. With this breeding schedule, we have a more consistent flow, and things are easier to manage. This keeps the parlor consistent too in how we manage goats through it and results in consistent milk and a consistent milk check.”

Previously, when drying off half their herd in the fall, Seth said it was hard to justify a full-time milking employee.

“Consistency is the name of the game — in the nursery, the parlor and the dry pen,” he said. “We’re going to do as many extended lactations as possible. I like those.”

Simultaneous to building the nursery, the Loudenbecks built a new barn to house more milking does. The barn is home to 145 yearlings due to kid in May and June.

“That will be the last big bunch to freshen,” Seth said.

The Loudenbecks improved animal flow to and from the parlor with the building of the second barn, which measures 70 feet by 100 feet and has two 80-foot pens. The barn has capacity for 250 goats.

The move into the nursery coincided with the Loudenbecks installing DairyComp and moving to electronic ear tags.

“We try to make everything as efficient as we can, and DairyComp helped us improve our recordkeeping,” he said. “Now that we have our numbers where we want them, we are focusing on genetics and improving our herd.”