Pasture and Fencing Options

[Meaghan]

@Southern by choice: That's good to know about the hotwire, we may have to do that until we can hard fence it in. I just don't know if even a machete could get through these woods. I'm sure the goats will manage to, though.

@goatgirl: We aren't fencing off our house, that's already done, but thank you for the tip. As far as the pit, the surveyors were supposed to do the whole property, so that they could certify that there were no sinkholes, which they did... But, who knows if they actually did.

@Buzz'n Billy: Thank you for the tip, but we had already purchased the woven wire fencing when I first posted this thread. I'll definitely keep that in mind for our final property, this one is just an interim while I'm in school at UF. We're probably going to either move back to the Oregon/Washington area or to Indiana when I'm out of school.

Ironically, when we got the fencing all we did was roll it out of the back of my SUV and into the garage for the night, and hadn't taken a look at it since because we aren't ready to fence yet (we're still painting the inside of the house, we weren't going to start a second project without finishing the first). Today, when we were out doing a few things in the garage, and I walked over to the fencing. To my shock, TSC gave us the wrong fencing. We went with the woven wire instead of the sheep and goat fencing that red brand sells because our Nubians are being disbudded so we didn't justify the $75 price difference. However, we ended up with the sheep and goat fencing for the price of the woven wire field fence.

We're going back to TSC in a couple days, so we'll let them know. Unfortunately, there is no way that we can get the fencing back into my car to give it back to them because Nathan is the only one capable of lifting anything. My back has been hurt for 8 weeks, and I keep hurting myself picking up our 10lb cats, let alone 330ft of fencing (what is that, 150lbs?). So I'm not sure what they're going to want to do about it, after all, it was their mistake.

Ah well. The sheep/goat fencing will work out better. We were just trying to be cheap for the time being.

 

[Southern by choice]

This is an area that we use with hotwire... in days it is cleared.
This is not the thickest area this area we move them out before they dead kill it so we can keep it growing for more food.
There is a Nigerian Dwarf bottom left.

Lower brush

If you look close you can see the yellow wire jusr behind the black goat.

The Anatolian and the Pyr manage to stay with them through the jungle. You can see where they are eating.

Pyr can barely move in it

This is how much is cleared

The Kiko likes to climb up and get the taller stuff off the trees

We move them back out because they will dead kill everything... quickly. If youwant it all dead killed keep in mind it will take NO time at all. Sometimes people get gets to do a small area, a few acres and they are shocked that is is gone so fast and then they are not always prepared to then ave to feed/hay them. If you are going to use them then eat them just make sure you get some wethers.

 

[Meaghan]

@Southern by choice: That's what our's looks like for the most part. It's so thick that I wouldn't want to try and walk through it right now. Do you ever have problems with the jungle shorting/leaking the hot wires?

 

[SueD]

@Southern by choice ...ok so stupid question here....how do you go about setting out the wire? Wrap it around the perimeter a couple of times? What distance do you put it to keep everyone in?

 

[Southern by choice]

Depending on how large the area is it can be gone in days to weeks. We will section it off and move the fencing. We don't want it dead killed but controlled grazing. It is there food, we want it to grow back. Generally we find wider more open areas and start there... to get through bad stuff a machete. We have been doing this for years now so we have our paths already set. Yes wire can short so it is something to watch for keep stuff off of it.

We do anywhere from 1-3 acres at a time. Some areas smaller... depends on how many goats are out there.

We actually use several t-posts and fill in with push ins (steel not fiberglass) Some stretches between posts can be 20 ft or so.
We use regular wire and the yellow rope... whatever we have on hand at the moment.

 

[Hens and Roos]

nice pictures @Southern by choice...had to look real close in the 1st few to see the goat!

 

[Buzz'n Billy]

We did 10 acres in about a week. That included digging the 50 fence posts by hand. The H braces and double H braces were done the week before.

 

[Meaghan]

We got about half of the fencing weaved through the forest on the right side of our three acre pasture from 2-5 yesterday, Nathan had already set the T-posts previously. Not bad, but we got chased out by the dark and had to go pick up hay for our llama anyways.

I'll post pictures as soon as we get it up fully. We're going to go with your suggestion, @Southern by choice for our back forested acre. It's far too difficult to get fencing into the more tamer stuff we have on the first 3 acres that's only about 10 feet wide, let alone the mess of a jungle we have on the last acre.