Successfully contained!

My pygmy goats Kodiak and Hannah have finally got a proper pen. The electric fence has held its own, delivered a few shocks, and successfully deterred even Kodiak with his huge horns from messing with it.

Here's the specs on my fence:

• 5 lines of 17-gauge aluminum wire
• On a 6", 12", 18", 24", and 36"
• Three fence posts, each with insulators, spaced about 15' apart
• One copper grounding rod about 4' in the ground, connected to ground with a copper grounding clamp.
• My fence controller is the cheap model at Tractor Supply with a 2-mile range, the Zareba ACC2.
• Each line has a line tightener on that is tightened as tight as possible without stretching the wire too much so that it breaks.

Very excited this works for the goats. My poor goats have been cooped up in a barn for nearly two weeks because their skittish nature makes them very difficult to get back in there. I still won't let Mack, the other pygmy buck, near the electric fence because I don't know that it would hold the goats back from getting to each other.

Speaking of Mack, I contained him in his pen successfully this weekend too. I found out he managed to squeeze between some posts to get out. Patched them, fixed the problem, and Mack is contained in an overgrown pen to clear it out for me.

When some more fencing is up in the pasture, he'll be set free to roam with the others! My first taste of success in this little farm adventure me and the family are involved in!

Cat Attack!

Since today was nearly 60 degrees out, I thought I'd take my serama chick out and let him take a look at the outside since he's been in the brooder and utility room ever since he was born. He greatly enjoyed hopping around the yard, but being a little quicker at this age than I ever anticipated, he managed to get under the porch.

I was very worried and was looking for a way under when in an instant... BOOM, something struck him from deep underneath porch. The poor chicken was on his side, more stunned than anything, and near in panic. About three feet away from him was our cat, Mr. Binks. Realizing a more deadly attack was imminent, I ripped the wooden lattice clean off our porch, scaring Mr. Binks away, and I literally dove underneath, grabbing the poor serama who was en route to the crawl space.

A careful inspection of him reveals no punctures, breaks, or any physical distress whatsoever. We were lucky this time; very lucky. This little serama is the first chicken I've ever hatched from an egg in my homemade incubator, so he's a little special to me and I would have been devastated, along with my wife and kids, if the little guy would have died.

I guess this little incident is a real eye opener that I may have a problem on my hands when it comes to free ranging my chickens. Perhaps the only solution is to get rid of Mr. Binks, however, I've seen other cats hanging around too. We'll see what happens, but if I start losing birds, I may have to get rid of Binks and lay a few cat traps (the humane ones; I promise!).

How Does He Do It?

My african pygmy, Mack, gets out of his pen ever single time. Leave him out, and he'll bleat for about an hour, then... silence. A quick glance out the window confirms he's no longer in his pen, and a longer glance confirms he's either on the porch eating sweet feed or in the front yard eating grass. Tomorrow's project... a thorough security exam of his pen.

Fencing Problem Seems Fixed!

Happy to report that my goats, Hannah and Kodiak, pen seems to be holding up. It's woven wire on three sides, but I have an electric fence on another side to keep them from the other side of the pasture.

After a miserable failure with the fence before, I decided to go all out. Five wires: one at 6", 12", 18", 24", and 36", all tight as banjo strings (figure of speech; not really too tight, just taught enough that there's no sag) attached to wooden posts.

It was all uphill from the time I realized I couldn't just nail electric fence wire to wood. When I finally got the insulators on and everything situated, I let my doe, Hannah, out. She ran around her enclosure happily and stuck her head between the wires at 24" and 36", and she jerked back quickly after receiving a small jolt. It was a great feeling because last time she tested the fence she jumped right through tearing the whole thing down.

My main project now is getting the entire pasture enclosed with regular non-electric fence. It's a big job, but hopefully it will get done in a timely fashion and give my goats a true place to play.

Pygmy Goat Fencing Lessons

Having three pygmy goats, I've learned three important lessons about fencing them in that no one ever told me.

1. Goats laugh at EDIT: poorly installed electric fencing. This of course is subject to a number of different factors. If I had five lines of high-tensile wire, evenly spaced 12" apart with 6,000 volt fence controller, that'd be a different story. I have three lines of untightened 17-gauge wire on $1 fiberglass posts and a $20 controller from Tractor Supply. My buck Kodiak and my doe Hannah both managed to run through it without a problem.
2. Goats can jump. My african pygmy goat Mack managed to jump a 36" gate on his pen. I know that 36" is really low. However, he's just a lil' guy and I really didn't know he had it in him. So, the moral of this lesson is to go to 48" on your gate.
3. If you don't feel a shock from the electric fence, your shoes are grounding you. After hours of "testing" my fence by grabbing it, I was disappointed at the nearly non-existent shock. I nearly returned the unit, until someone pointed out the afforementioned lesson. Turns out it wasn't defective at all. Ouch. And as a sidebar, never, ever touch the grounding rod (in my case, a 6' pure copper rod hammered completely into the ground) and the fence wire. I learned that lesson the hard way. Ouch. Again.

I created a pen today out of some old woven wire fencing and some already standing posts for my african pygmy buck Mack. It's working pretty good, especially since it was an overgrown garden and he's having a field day eating the dried up plants and weeds. Other than the minor setback of the gate being jumpable, it seems to be working quite nice.

I still have issues sufficiently fencing in Kodiak and Hannah, my pygmy mixes. They are much... thicker than Mack. They need more room than he does, therefore, they need a larger section of the pasture fenced off. My electric fence is really the only thing I have, and it's only 17-gauge with a cheap $20 Tractor Supply controller. I can't afford to spring for regular mesh wire and post fencing right now (at least for a month) so I really need to make something work with my electric fence.

Tomorrow's project will be fixing Mack's gate so it's significantly higher and stronger. This should make a nice temporary home while I finish the project of fencing in the entire pasture with wire and posts. I also will be setting up the electric fence again for the other pygmies. This time, I'm using five wires, line tighteners, wooden fence posts, anextra grounding rod for increased shock, and visibility flags. They got through the fence last time, but this time I'm building the divider much stronger and tenser. This fence needs to go up to divide off a section of the pasture so I can separate the bucks and does. I want the fence up to be a divider that can easily be removed.

Anyhow, I'll update the blog. This goat-keeping project is starting to wear me down (already!)

A Little Background...

My wife and I moved into our house which sits on nearly five acres of land about a year ago. After numerous repairs to our home, and to the old sheds on the property, we both had plans for animals we wanted to raise.

I wanted chickens. Always have wanted to raise chickens; those cool breeds you see at the county fair, not just the regular chickens. My wife has always wanted pygmy goats. We now currently have ten silkie chicks, and three pygmy goats.

This is our story; read back often to see exactly what happens!