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Back in June of 2013, I adopted a pair of goats from a nearby farm, a brother and sister whom I named Bela and Tenda respectively. They were always getting into mischief, but once I figured out however they were managing to outwit me, I was always able to get back in control of things. Unfortunately, Bela suddenly passed away in May of this year. There were no warning signs; he'd been perfectly happy and healthy the day before, and there was no sign of attack nor injury. After we buried him, I set out to find his sister a friend so she wouldn't go crazy from being alone. It took a few weeks, but finally we met Vinny, a wether that a farmer not too terribly far from me had taken in when a family had to move and wasn't allowed to bring their goats with them. Pictured: Vinny (white, background) and Tenda (black, foreground) Vinny's a bundle of laughs and I love him to death, but he's unfortunately developed a major problem and I cannot find a way to solve it. You see, Bela and Tenda were both Nigerian dwarf goats, which are a very small breed, but Vinny is a Nubian mix of some sort and he's easily twice Tenda's size. At first this wasn't a problem, but eventually Vinny discovered that through the combined forces of his height on his rear legs and his weight that he's able to climb onto the top of the fence and sort of flop himself over it. At first I thought that he was only able to do it in places where his weight could physically bend the fence, but one day I literally watched him push himself over a section of fence that I'd just reinforced. This is a big problem because now that it's getting cold, there's the potential for snow, and if he lets himself out and gets wet and then has nowhere to get out of the weather, he could literally freeze to death. The major issue here is that I'm not financially stable at the moment, meaning that I absolutely cannot afford to, say, completely redo the entire yard with a taller fence. My father suggested maybe getting a solar-powered electric fence kit that he'd seen at the local farm store, but my understanding is that goats don't take well to negative reinforcement and frankly I'm not entirely sure where on the fence I'd even need to place the wire to make it most effective as I'm worried Vinny would value his freedom to come and go high enough that he'd absolutely endure a brief shock as he jumped the fence. It's clear at this point that my initial plan of just reinforcing the fence with additional t-posts between the existing ones isn't enough, and that's all I'd come up with aside from that. Does anyone have any ideas? To be clear, I can spend money on this, but it'd have to be less than like $150 maximum.
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Nov 24, 2019 22:44
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:43 |
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It's good to know that the amount of frustration I've been feeling is natural and that other goat owners are sitting on their thrones in their black robes muttering, "Yes, good, late the hate flow through you." Thank you for the advice guys. I will be sure to get some electric fencing set up and teach him that maybe when I tell him to do something he should damned well do it.Fluffy Bunnies posted:Because otherwise you're looking at a huge lawsuit when a car inevitably hits your loose rear end in a top hat goat(s). Interesting side note regarding this: I'll sometimes let them out in the yard when the weather's nicer so they can scratch that itch for exploration they've got and also eat up weeds and underbrush and whatnot, and the loving weird thing is they seem to understand the property lines?? I don't understand how, but I've sometimes just kinda left them to their own devices for a while and they've never once actually left the property even given the perfect opportunity to do so. Not saying it's impossible that it could happen, just that I'm surprised it hasn't given how many times they've found ways to get loose over the years.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:50
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