Cold is not the Alpine's problem — damp is
Alpines are a mountain dairy breed, sure-footed and genuinely cold-hardy in a dry coat, and a healthy adult in good condition shrugs off weather that sends the keeper indoors. What breaks them down across a winter is the slow combination of moisture and still, stale air: wet bedding that keeps udders and bellies damp, condensation dripping from an unventilated roof, and draughts slicing in at the height where goats lie. Pneumonia, not frostbite, is the winter disease of badly housed goats, and it is built by those three conditions over weeks.
Design the shelter backwards from that. The building's job is to keep the goats dry and out of the wind while letting moist, ammonia-laden air escape above their heads.
The building: tight at the floor, open at the top
A three-sided shed suits Alpines in milder districts if its open side faces away from the winter wind; a four-sided barn with a door the herd can use freely suits harsher ones. Either way, seal the gaps at goat level — the cracked board, the warped door bottom — and put the ventilation high: a gap under the eaves or louvred vents near the roof that a keeper standing inside cannot feel on their own face at goat height. If you can smell ammonia strongly at floor level, the ventilation is losing and the bedding is telling you so.
Space matters because Alpines are hierarchical and horned herds are pushier still. Every doe needs to be able to get fully inside, lie down, and reach hay without running a gauntlet of herdmates at a single narrow door. Two openings, or one wide one, change the social weather of a winter barn completely.
Bedding and the raised platforms Alpines choose
Deep litter straw, added fresh on top through the winter and cleaned out wholesale when it finally heats and packs, gives does a dry nest they can paw into shape. Alpines also climb by instinct, and low, sturdy platforms, benches, or tiered sleeping shelves inside the barn are used constantly: they lift goats off the coldest air at floor level, keep udders out of the bedding, and give lower-ranking does an escape route upward instead of a corner to be trapped in. Build platforms from materials that can be scraped clean and strong enough for several full-size does at once, because that is exactly the load they will take.
Keep the kidding area, if does are due in late winter, as a separate draught-proof pen within the barn with its own deep clean bedding — a newborn Alpine kid's hardiness is nothing like its mother's.
The winter working routine
Hay racks under cover keep feed clean and let the herd eat without standing out in sleet, and winter forage should be generous: the rumen is the goat's furnace, and a doe that goes into the night with a full rumen is heating herself from inside. Water needs checking for ice at both ends of the day, and a doe that stops drinking in cold weather is a doe quietly heading for trouble. Feet deserve a winter look too, since standing in damp bedding softens hooves and invites rot; pick a dry day and trim and inspect the herd in rotation.
A goat coughing repeatedly, breathing fast at rest, standing hunched apart from the herd, or off her feed should be seen by a veterinarian promptly — respiratory trouble in goats moves faster than it looks.
Splitting those jobs in KinsLe Care Teams — bedding topped up, water checked, the late-gestation does looked over, each marked with its completion time — keeps an Alpine herd's winter care from depending on one person's memory.