RAAH Fullblood Boer Goats - Just Goat Fence

RAAH BOER GOATS

Just Fence
(Why to Buy Goat Fence)

Our first goat was an unregistered pygmy (Betty), and our second goat was a fullblood Boer (Miss Kitty) to keep the first warm over the winter.

One of the first things needed for a goat is a fence. Sounds simple enough, just something to keep the goats from wandering off and keep other critters from wondering in.

Our fist fence was going to be temporary until we could get a stall ready in the barn (a long story) and make a permanent home for the pygmy goat. The fence was made from livestock panels, metal fence post and heavy duty black cable ties. My brother uses it and had never had any problems. The first panels I bought were hog panels on the advice of my brother who raises pygmy goats and uses them for all his fencing. The fence went up quickly and looked good in the barnyard.

We learned quickly that goats can jump, who thought that a six week old pygmy goat could jump over a 34 inch tall hog panel. I asked my brother about the problem and he recommended that I “fatten her up” so she could not jump as high. Obviously you can’t fatten a goat up over night so I did the logical thing, bought cattle panels (54 inches tall). We just zip tied them up to the hog panels and no more goat escapes.

When it was time to move Betty into the barn we moved the fence, cattle panels, around the back of the barn. Betty was moved into her new spacious home and all seemed well. I sold the hog panels to my brother so he could enlarge his pasture area for his non-high jumping goats. Within the hour we noticed that Betty was loose again, and after a little detective work we figured out how she was escaping. It seems she wasn’t jumping out, now she was just crawling out through the nice 6x6 inch holes in the fence. The solution, add two foot tall chicken wire to the bottom of the fence. All is well again, the goat is contained.

We found a friend for Betty, Miss Kitty, and moved her into the barn. Everything went well all winter long. Spring came and everything started to grow, bushes, trees flowers. Even the horns on Miss Kitty were getting longer and wider. The goats were doing well and were always happy to see me when I arrived home after work. I always received nice loud baas when getting out of the car to go into the house.

One afternoon, like many others, I arrived home, got out of the car, listened to the goats baa loudly at me, baaed back and went in the house for supper. When I went back outside to go visit the girls (goats) the friendly baa from Miss Kitty had turned into a frantic, persistent baa. She looked fine from the back porch. She was standing on the fence, her head stuck through, eating a bush on the other side of the fence. It seemed like no big deal until I got close enough to see was really going on. Miss kitty was standing up on the fence, her head stretched through a 6x6 opening in the fence, and her head pushed through a Y in the branches of the bush. Needless to say she was stuck in bad way. We freed her from the bush and fence and sawed off part of the bush and thought our problems were over. Over the next few weeks she continued to get her horn stuck in the fence but she finally learned not to stick her head through. We were told that we were very lucky that Miss Kitty is still alive. Many times a goat will get its head stuck, panic and end up hanging itself.

When we add more fence it will be goat fence and we are going to replace all our cattle panels with goat fence. I guess its called goat fence for a reason; it’s designed with goats in mind. Goat panels are also available, but they are double the cost of a hog or cattle panel due to the fact they have a lot more metal in them.