How do you fence goats without breaking the bank?

We have used about everything. Web wire didn't work very well for us. We now use hog panels with two strands of barb above it. There are a lot of old hog operations around here & most farm auctions have fencing. I have a truck load of barb wire I bought for $1. Our electric fence has not been on for a year no problems yet.

The fence isn't my big problem...it's the barn door. Darned goats have figured out how to open it, so we must now make sure it is ALWAYS locked from the outside. Sunday morning, I got up, went to let the dogs out and there were at least a dozen goats in the driveway looking at the kitchen door.

Ruth

Heidi, here are some pictures of what I used:

Fence Already up:







Wire Closeup:





Post:



The second wire picture shows the woven knots in the wire were the wires cross. Field fence here has smaller openings at the bottom and larger at the top. RedBrand carries a version of this wire as well, but I used something else that had a higher strength galvanization since we are really humid here and I was going to put the wire all the way to the ground (to keep dogs in and out).

I hope you can see in the fence pictures that the fence is stretched tight. This is what actually keeps the fence up not necessarily the posts.

I found the wood posts were cheaper here than the T-Posts that I would have had to use. The reason being that the T-Posts would need to be driven 3-4 feet into the sand we call dirt around here, whereas the wood posts only needed to go down 2' (3' - 4' on the corners). An alternatinve to the wood posts that I have used in the past was landscape timbers (though they don't last as long if you don't treat them). The landscape timbers are sometimes cheaper (I've gotten them for as little as $2.50 a piece at times) but need to be trimmed since they are 8' long.

Hope this helps,

Bob D. in FL.

Bob what town do you live near?? The reason I ask I lived a good number of years in Central Florida (New Smyrna Beach, Oakhill, Cocoa, Melborne, Clearwater) just curious. I sort of miss Fla from time to time, I missed it yesterday due to the heavy snowfall and cold temps...Nice looking place you have there...

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TOPSIDE FARMS

ive got 4 kinds of wire up on my place.
i have 5' woven field wire on the perimeter of the place. so far we haven't caught any goats by the horns but its only a matter of time. i plan on one day coming back and adding an electrified line about 6" out.
i have 3' x 16' hog panels around the yard. the goats stand against the panel to get to the crepe myrtle bushes. the goats cant bend the panels butttt i did have a full grown nubian get her head caught in a second to top hole. within seconds she destroyed the panel. have had a nubian jump this height of paneling.
i also have goat sheep woven wire 3 foot tall and has holes that are wider than taller with the idea that the goats will work their head out naturally. so far they have. it will need some sort of extra support or a hot wire to keep the goats from pulling it down. looks and feels very flimsy.
i also have a 5' tall panel with 4" holes for around my garden. heavier than blazes but i sure wish i could afford that everywhere.

We fenced the primeter of our 13 acres so we had boundries for all the timber guys out here.

I wish I had all the money back I wasted on fencing. We can't do electic here from the lightening, we are a lightening strike area up on our iorn ore property with the trees or I would go electric netting...preimierfence1 or something similar to that, it's a .com

I started with cattle panels, just enough for corrals around each of the barn stalls, and as I could afford it I added more and more panels until we had larger and larger areas fenced with the pannels (T posts with corn H's) no way will landscape timbers hold up in our high moisture areas, invest in good treated round posts. The Tposts are great because as you add more fenicing you can pull them out (get a puller outer from harborfreight.com or is that ie?) Plus you can do it yourself with no help. I do have field fence up all over the property now, with an old export check, but really without electric to keep them off, you really have to put it up like you do for horses...a barbless wire at the borrom and two barbed at the top, even then we repull sections after major storms and hurricanes when we loose trees over them.

Go slow, some of the ideas are wasted on goats, like the welded horse wire, when bucks grow up they can break the welds just rubbing on them. Really check out the Priemer catalog though it also gives you excellent ideas, the portable fences are wonderful also as you can afford to fence it in permanant. vicki

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Vicki McGaugh
Nubian Soaps
North of Houston TX
www.etsy.com/shop/nubiansoaps

A 3 decade dairy goat farm homestead that is now a retail/wholesale soap company and construction business.

TopSide1, I'm east of St. Cloud near a little town called Narcoossee in Osceola County.

Bob D. in FL.

i think that would break the bank. what is your cost per acre?

I use the redbrand goat fence. Use ONLY woven wire, not welded. Goats will ruin welded wire fast. You could use the field fence, but if the holes are bigger than like 4x4 inches, then expect goats to either get thier heads stuck or for small baby goats to be able to sneak trhough. I'd say go with field fencing or cattle panels, but ONLY ever get DISBUDDED goats, because you'll save yourself frustration upon frustration if you just get only disbudded goats. Trust me. I like horned and well as disbudded, but the 'goat fence' costs so much more than the regular field fence! Eek!

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Dona Barski

"Breed the best, eat the rest"

Caprice Acres

French and American Alpines. CAE, Johnes neg herd. Abscess free. LA, DHIR.

We tried plain electric wire, and when we got up to seven strands, it kept the doe in, but the buck got out whenever he wanted to.

The goats rub on woven wire till it bellies out and comes up at the bottom.

I like my Kencove electric net fence, but we only have a few goats, so it's not a huge area.

I use the shorter Kencove electric net fence for my dog's yard, too. Wonderful stuff.

1 Acre=834ft
52 cattle panels @ $15.00 = $780 (I can get them for about $13 each if I order 100 at a time but haven't done that yet.)
Fence posts (I'm not sure of the price, we had a lot here when we moved in from an old barb wire fence.)

If you consider the cattle panels will last almost forever, I shouldn't have to replace them in my lifetime-I think it is worth the extra cost. I live near a highway and can't risk having my goats getting out.

(if someone is considering cattle panels, contact the supplier you can get them cheaper if you buy direct. Mine are Redbrand, I'm not sure of the other brands out there.)

Did you just call Redbrand and they shipped them to you? Never thought of that...

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"They laughed, because he was different"

"He laughed, because they were all the same"

Bob - great pictures and info. Thanks!!

Everyone - Thank you so much for all your suggestions. From what I have gathered...correct me if I'm wrong, I:

1. Need woven NOT welded fencing
2. holes no larger than 4"x4"
3. Probably not "non-climb" because they it is weak and they can still pull it down.
4. most likely WILL need strand of barbed-wire or electric on top and bottom?

Ace Hardware/OK Lumber will order Red Brand fencing. I was unable to find any field fencing that had 4"x4" holes on the upper part and 2"x4" on the bottom.

Right now if I was to purchase I think I would go with the 4"x4", 48", Square Deal Knot woven.

The only predators I'm concerned about right now are the neighborhood dogs. They killed my entire herd of show Mini Lops a year ago. I always have dogs sniffing around. Cattle panels would be a very good idea, if I lived in the Lower-48 and shipping wouldn't be the same price as the product.

Thanks for all your great suggestions!! Let me know if I need to think of other options, PLEASE.

Heidi

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Wife to Ben, mother to Levi (8), Faith (6), Hope (5), Charity (3) and Benjamin and Joseph 21 montths.

Ok, what are cattle panels? LOL I originally thought you were talking about something like round pen panels with closer gaps, but for those prices, definitely not!

Does anyone have a pic of these cattle panels? I wonder if that might be an option for me here?

Thanks!

DD

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"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap."

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

(click on farm and ranch-they are called wire stock panels on this site)

http://www.redbrand.com/products/pro...=2&productID=7

The are very hard to bend (they come in 16ft long flat pieces)
If your land is fairly flat they are perfect but if your land is hilly it might be hard to use them.

They also make great gates (cut in half)
trellis for beans, vines
tie your tomato plants instead of a "tomato basket"
we make a "cage" to haul goats in the back of our truck bed
My garden is fenced with cattle panels to keep the goats out of it
They can be cut with bolt cutters
I can do all the fencing by myself without the help of my husband

We use them all the time.

I'll go and take a picture of mine later today (I bought 8 new panels last night.)

Darn. All this wonderful stuff, hundreds of miles away. There's got to be somehere in New England that sells it!

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Peace, tremulous, unexpected, sent a taproot out of nowhere into Morgon's heart. -Patricia McKillip, Harpist in the Wind

Ask the feed store or maybe hardware store. Does anyone in your area carry Redbrand? If so they might be able to order them for you. They are called different things -stock panels, cattle panels, all stock panels. I think they are 4 gauge but I could be wrong.

www.redbrand.com

We have several types of fencing. For us, electric in wins almost all the time. It's SOOOO much less expensive then everything else we've looked at. It's very durable, and easy to move or change around if we want to. It keeps everything in, except a buck when there is a doe in heat around. And it keeps predators out too.

We do have field fencing for the bucks pens, with a hot wire at nose height. When the electric is off, they lean and climb on the field fence, so I wouldn't trust field fence alone, ever.

The cattle panels are great for small areas and for gates, but we wouldn't use them for a whole field because of a) the high cost and b) our terrain isn't super flat or even so they wouldn't work.

I have a 3YO. She touched the fence once or twice, but knows to stay clear of it. We have those yellow signs hanging from it. Check with a doctor, but I have never heard of the shock from an electric fence being any danger to those with heart problems. Definitely worth checking on though. I can understand your hesitation, but my guess is they have researched the safety of electric chargers for those type of situations. You could also contact the customer service department of one of the companies that makes the chargers and ask them about it.

IMHO, you can't beat electric for most applications.

Lowe's has some of their garden fencing. Maybe I can get them to order some of their goat fencing.

After putting in every ZIP code that would be convenient for me to go to and coming up blank on the Red Brand site, I am thinking what I ought to do is email some of the local goat breeders and ask them where they got their fencing.

This thread has been really useful for telling me what products I want to look for, though. Thank you to everyone sharing their knowlege.

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Peace, tremulous, unexpected, sent a taproot out of nowhere into Morgon's heart. -Patricia McKillip, Harpist in the Wind

2 x 4 welded wire fencing is great stuff.

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