Putting up pens

Yesterday a group of volunteers came to help Vet2Be set up temporary pens and fencing for his Eagle project. It was raining, which was miserable, but it did make the posts much easier to drive. They got 2 new pens built and one new fence up in about 1 hour. Most of this will come down after the April 25th. They are only up to keep the animals safe from visitors!


We often have visitors who want to see what we do here. Many of them have never been in a pen with goats or ducks or chickens. Sometimes it surprises them that the animals come right up to them. With an estimated 200-300 visitors coming on April 25th, we need to make sure that we don't have friendly animals being swatted away by surprised visitors.

Vet2Be spent an hour earlier in the day looking around the arena and planning where to put the new pens and where to put the gates on the pens. That made it much easier when all the volunteers got here.

An Eagle Project is supposed to show leadership. Vet2Be taught his volunteers (most of whom are friends that he called to come and help) how and where to build the fences. He went with Dad to the local feed store and showed him what type of fencing he needed. He also used a few small panels that were not being used (the brown and green ones) for gates.

They moved old fencing, pounded posts, tied the the wire fencing to the posts with wire, and wired the gates to the posts. Nothing fancy here--just serviceable.


You can see the goats staying out of the way. Goats hate to stand out in the rain, so these girls and their kids are all under the barn overhang.
It is hard to see the wire fencing in a photo! You can see the brown panel in the center of the picture, though. The fencing goes from the left side of the panel towards the left. It also goes from the right side of the panel to the white fencing.
The odd looking feeder on the left is actually an old llama chute that we rig up for a feeder in the winter. We hang a half-barrel on the side rails and cover the top with a piece of wood to keep the snow off.

Some of the volunteers offered to come back and dig out some of the old posts! In the second photo there are some short, white posts sticking up--they are old vinyl fencing posts that didn't survive the horses. I'll be excited to see them gone!