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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] housecleaning
  • Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:12:23 EDT



> What's the best fence to contain goats? Electric or barbed wire?

Barbed wire is useless unless you put it every four inches and even then I
bet they'd get out.

No fence (except Lynda's suggestion of a prison fence) will hold goats that
don't want to be held. The first thing is to make it so that their
motivation
to leave the perimeter is minimal, enough food, water, shade, etc. They
don't
like to be in the rain and if a shelter is INside the fence, they are more
reluctant to leave.

All you can do is somewhat discourage them from leaving. High tensile is
expensive and not necessary. What we've found to work best is common 17
gauge
electric fence wire with the slack kept out of it by means of high tensile
tensioners. Those nylon tensioners for 17 ga fencing are useless. Wires
at 6"
12" 24" 36" keeps them in. We learned to rig the 6" and 24" wires as one
circuit and the 12" and 36" wires as a second circuit so the latter could be
disconnected from the charger grounded if the weather gets too dry and
provide the
other pole for the shock.

The fence also has a wire at 52" for the benefit of equines and bovines.

The goats will learn what the wire is and avoid it. But if they want to go
out badly enough, they will go out. </HTML>




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