Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLSpring Means Fencing
Along with warm weather and gentle rains (unless you’re in Illinois where the rain isn’t gentle and likes to arrive with a dose of spring snow as well), comes fencing. “Fencing?” you ask. We built fences last year.
Those fences were lovely last year. This year, they’re, well, a year older and so are the goats. With every passing year those sweet little goat babies become more sneaky and more determined to visit the neighbors. So it’s time to check the fences.
Tara at This Agrarian Life has some excellent pointers on building and maintaining fencing for goats. I agree with her wholeheartedly on the presence of horns and I’ll add a bit on using field fence.
Field fence, aka box wire, will keep goats in but it needs to be checked periodically as they will attempt to go over it. Because it has more give than cattle panels, it needs to be kept tight and a strand of electric or barbed goes a long way toward keeping the goats from trying to go over it. Make sure your wire is taller than the goats because if they can get their feet on the top, they’ll be vaulting right over.
Of equal importance is setting the wire low to the ground. Cattle people fence for cows which don’t generally crawl on their bellies to get under a fence. Goats will. It’s also beneficial to set the posts closer together for goats. Closer posts lessen the ability of the goat to bounce off of the fence thereby stretching it out for escape.
So between spring showers, take a look at your fencing. Your neighbors, and your goats, will thank you. Well, maybe not the goats.
The “cattle panel” idea is a good one – I use them where I can. They are also pricey (what fence isn’t), so I don’t use many.
I’ve found that a hornless goat is HARDER to take care of and I’ve seen the damage those horns can do to a stray dog (before we got LGDs). They DO give the goat a measure of protection. I’ve been poked by horns, too, but not very often. I try not to put myself in that situation. The horns are a HUGE advantage when working without a headgate or chute. I’ve also been in the pen with an unruley buck (of 180 pounds). He came at me to show me who the bigger goat was. I grabbed his horns, wrestled his face into the dirt, and we had an understanding forever more…If he hadn’t had his horns, He probably would have won.
As for sticking their heads through fences, when I have one who does this, I grey tape a 12′ long piece of 1/2 water pipe (plastic) crossways between the horns. Leave it on for a week or two, and they will learn to keep their head out of a fence.
I also have three horned goats that will constantly stick their heads through a fence. I leave them alone because they have also learned how to twist their head back through the opening in the wires.
Also – with some goats (horned or not) they will test ANY fence. I have two of these type. I made “yokes” out of 3/4 x 3/16 metal that bolts around their neck. It’s light weight, and keeps them inside the pasture when they want to go “walk-about”.
The yokes even work on LGDs.
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