Best way to fence in goats?

Put one of those wires on standouts 16 inches high or so like someone mentioned, it will keep them from scratching which is one of their favorite and most destructive activities...

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Affordable will usually equal not working! I am using cattle panels. Yes, they are more expensive, but goats like to stand on teh fence & they like to eat on the other side of it. I have had Pygmy goats, Lamanchas, & Nubians & have not had a goat get out yet unless I leave the gate open. I get the panels at Tractor supply which is the cheapest place I found. There are different panels. Cattle panels, hog panels, goat panels, combination panels. Cattle panels are the cheapest out of those at least around here. I am putting my posts every 8 feet. Alternating wood with metal. This is working great & should last a very long time. Another benefit is if you need to fix it, you can replace one panel instead of having to splice in fence & re-stretch it.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

what about electrified high tensile, 7 strand?

i use redbrand sheep and goat field fence. we have never had a goat get out. it isn't cheap, but it works for us.....

I know it sounds crazy, but we actually kept a few mature goats in with 2 strands of the electrified tape last summer and fall and will do so again soon for at least another year. After culling hard, we had to move the rest in a hurry due to a CL outbreak. They do have a large area, more than enough grass and browse and they aren't jumpers or crawlers *so far*, but now have kids at their sides, so it will be interesting. We can't really depend on only electric full time, year-round here. (We also live a mile from anyone else in any direction and a few hundred yards from the public road if they were to get out.) Though not cheap, 4" panels are the cream of the crop for goats.

i generally like field fence with a strand of hot wire about knee height to the goats. i've also used alternating hot/barbed wire and it worked fine.

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I have mine in 4ft. fixed knot fencing...they have never gotten out. I know a guy who keeps his in 4ft. electrified netting.

We have barbed wire (5 strand) w/ 3 rows of electric on 5- standoffs that are placed and mid shin level, knee level and mid thigh level. The barbed wire was here before us. Any new wire was the non barbed 5 strand horse wire. We have 165 ac. and the goats are in just 20+- ac. We are going to get them into an 80ac. section soon.

We have one section of fence us that is just 5 wire electric w/ fiberglass poles as we are cross fencing it. They don't challenge it. rebar would be good for that as well.

Electric is the only thing I know of that will keep them off a fence. We train them by shoving them into the fence once and they never do it again. They can push through or step down most everything else. We have horns so I don't want them to strangle. I had a got get caught and killed in a cattle panel. Shoved her head though and couldn't get out. I didn't have bolt cutters at the time, they were in DH truck at his work and the goat died before we could get her out.

Cattle panels would be the best w/o electric but as mentioned before they are really expensive and do still have trapping issues.

The best way to keep goats on one side of a fence is to convince the goats that you really, truly want them to be on the [U]other[U] side of the fence.

That should work as long as the charged wires nd grounded wires are strtegically placed.

Also, a person from soil conservation told me that they are finding that 7 strand needs corners that are double braced.

I use either livestock panels (for smaller pens) and livestock fencing with electric to keep them from standing on the fence......about 12" off the ground, one at the height of their noses, and one on top of the livestock fence.

I plan on trying some 5 or 7 strand high tensile on an area that I plan to fence this summer.

I jhave found that the hardest ones to keep fenced in are the "baby" bucks during the rut. I have had those little critters clear 5' livestock panels.

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"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

We have about 3 miles of fencing on our farm, all of it 47" woven wire with one strand of barbed wire about 5 inches on top. Posts are cedars or any tree in line, often the posts/trees are 15 feet apart, but when we plant a line of posts we shoot for 12'. Woven wire is pushed with our toe all the way down, then nailed and streched TIGHT, did I say tight? Be sure, no matter how tight you stretch it, the goats will show you just how much in can be stretched! Then we put the barbed on top, not the heavy 12 ga but the cheap 15 ga as it stretches tighter and the barbs are sharper. We just use the claw/ball of the hammer to gauge the height of the barbed, it's about 5 inches. We then go back inbetween each post with a scrap of the barbed wire about 10" long, twisting it around the barbed wire then down and around the top strand on the woven, this prevents them from walking down the fence or jumping through the gap between the woven and barbed wire.

Our fence works, we've never had a single escape in 8 years!