Goats Who Unlock Fences

We have no idea how the buck and wether are opening the gate and getting into the back yard. But they are!

Crazy goats!

This is our temporary fix until we can figure out something better. 'Better' means we don't have to take off a bungee cord each time we head to the barn. Not the easiest task when we have our hands full of things.

See the clip at the top? That's what they manage to open. We haven't caught them doing it, but we catch them in the backyard (and in the neighbor's yard) often enough that we know they can.

The bungee is holding them in for now. We would rather have them out eating the grass then penned up eating hay, so we're stuck with this for a little while.

Hubby tried to add the chain link gate latch, but it doesn't fit on our fence. We need something the goats can't open, and something that we can open from either side of the gate. Something we can do one-handed when necessary.

I'm thinking about taking the photo to IFA and asking one of the nice folks there to come up with a solution. They always do their best to help down there, which is why I keep going back.

If you have any ideas, feel free to post them below! There has to be something easy that I don't know about, or haven't thought of.

New Feeders

We really wanted to feed inside the stalls because the hay is easier to clean up inside (there are mats on the stall floors) and the goats tend to eat more of the hay that falls down if it doesn't fall into the dirt.

The walls between the stalls are removable, and one was falling down because the wooden rails that hold the boards in place had come loose.

So while the boards were down, we decided to tie a piece of wire fencing, we call it cattle panel, to the boards.

A farmer's best friend--bailing twine!
Okay, maybe a farmer's best friend is still his dog.

You can see how we tied the fencing to the wall. We tied it in  four places along each side and twice along the bottom. The twine at the top is tied longer than the twine at the bottom. 

We only put in a flake of hay in each feeder in the summer as a treat. But I'm pretty sure we can fit 4-6 flakes in each feeder depending on the height of the feeder.

Since we used scrap fencing, some of the feeders turned out taller than others.

This feeder is taller than the first one. It's the second one we put up.

We didn't want to take down the wall to put this feeder up so I bought some eye-bolts and some wire strapping. There are 3 eye-bolts along each side and two pieces of wire strapping along the bottom to hold the fencing on the wall along the bottom.

A closer look at they eye-bolts in the wooden wall. We drilled pilot holes so we wouldn't split the 2x6 boards.

Here's a photo of one of the metal straps along the bottom.

Some of the fencing had sharp edges so Vet2Be filed them off smooth.

The only thing we would do differently is to put the smaller holes on the bottom instead of on the top. I think less hay would have fallen through. (The fencing has a row of shorter holes along one edge, you can see it in photo 3 along the top edge.)

We've had the feeders up for about two months now without anyone getting caught in them. I would worry if they hung out from the wall a little farther, one of the kids might be able to climb or jump in the side.

They seem to eat more of the hay even when it falls on the straw bedding or shavings, which means we waste less. We can easily feed 4 goats at each feeder. We usually have 5 goats on one feeder and the 2 llamas and 3 sheep on the other. I'm sure if the feeder was longer we could fit a few more around the table!

Fencing Idea

Hubby hates to use the tiller near fencing.

But we want to keep the chickens out of the garden.

And we want them to be able to get around the barnyard and up the access drive to eat the grasshoppers.

So here is the new fence idea, which seems to be working so far.

Wire panels hung on hooks that are welded to the drill pipe fence.
(now if the idiots who installed the fencing had listened, the wire fence would be pig wire, not cattle wire!)

You could do this with wood fencing, too. 4" x 4" wooden posts would be strong enough to hold up the wire fencing, especially if you put cement in the hole (which the idiots 'forgot' to do on 1/3 of the posts, sheesh!)

We're going to have to cap the drill pipe to keep wasps from building nests. Since we had a few old solar pathway lights around, I decided they might be handy to have in the drill pipe to light the access drive in the dark. We like the idea so well we'll find some more solar lights on sale at the end of the season and figure out a way to glue them into the pipe.

The crazy way we have to have the hoses set up so we can water in the desert!

So far the wire panels have worked to keep all but the smartest chickens out (who jump through the bottom holes). And the panels are easy to lift off so that Hubby or Son1 can till the garden. There are no gates (that would have been another $400 for 2 gates) so we just pick a panel up and move it to the side so we can get in and out. Moving the panel to get in and out of the garden is easier than it sounds.

All in all the idea has worked very well so far. Vet2Be has been adding some wire fencing to the bottom of the panels to keep the chickens out. We don't want to go out and buy all new panels with 4" x4" holes (pig panel) right now.

New Fencing

Things have been busy here. We are getting new fencing! Yay!

The old vinyl fencing was in horrible shape. The previous owners were told that it was 'animal grade' fencing. It wasn't. But it took us a long time (15 years) before we were able to replace it.

This fencing, although not beautiful, will last for 50 years and be able to withstand horses and bucks!

New fencing! Drill pipe with wire panels welded on to them.

The pipes were sunk 3 feet into the ground. No animal is going to be able to move them! Okay, maybe an elephant, but we don't raise elephants.

We have some great guys working on it since no one in our family can weld. I can't tell you how excited I am to have gates on hinges instead of gates on bailing twine! Hoooray!!!


They have been working on the fence for about 2 weeks, hopefully it will be done by the middle of next week. Then we can put all the animals back where they belong. For now, I'm really glad we have the kind of animals we have. They are easy to move around and put together with each other.

The neighbor has to bring her horse down the road to another pasture every day and then bring him back every night. No fun at all!

Hooray for new fencing!!

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!