Goat containment

Looking for successful ideas of goat containment before I give up and sell the herd. I've had goats for over 6 years and a strong attachment to them.
I've used electric net fence and solar charger from Premier 1 all these years but now I'm finding that that system faulters and my goats don't mind the shock (if there is one) enough to keep them from getting out. I've had my garden eaten and I'm not willing to let that happen again.
Truthfully, goats seem to be more work that I'm willing to commit to, though I'm curious if anyone has innovative systems of keeping them that works better.
I'm also not pleased with how destructive goats are to the land. It's just hard for me to see the benefit of having them in a place when I'm watching them kill small trees. I have believed that rotational grazing was best, thus the reason I've opted for moveable fence rather than permanent, but it isn't as secure. The only secure thing I've come up with is tethering, but this is far from optimal and requires a lot of checking in on them. Not to mention it takes more work to create shelters.

What tips do you have for keeping goats in a stress-free way? Anyone care to talk me down from selling the whole herd this week?

Do you know what specifically your problem is?  How hot is your charger?  

We have hilly bumpy ground and found that we needed to weedwack the fenceline before placing the fence, and if it stays in one place for much more than one week (during growing season), the grass grows up enough to contact the fence, and enough grass will drop our shock level significantly.  For example, with a freshly set up fence with weedwacked lines so nothing is contacting it, we can hit just over 11k volts with a Premier 1 solar charger, but after 2 weeks of growth, even after walking the fenceline and pulling errant blades of grass in areas we get loud snapping noises, our fence charge was down in the low 8k volt range.  Now, if you're rotating them as a parasite management strategy, realistically they shouldn't be on that same area for more than a week anyhow, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.    So, some troubleshooting with the electric fence situation may be worth looking at.

If they're killing trees, how long are you keeping them in the same area?  If they're small trees,  yeah, you need to keep the goats away from the trees til they get large enough that the goats can't reach all of their branches, and potentially also protect the trunk with a tree trunk protector.  I have planted my pasture trees in tree tubes, but I've seen spiral things that can be placed on larger trees, or you could make a circle out of cattle panel around the tree to keep it from being eaten if you can't fence the goats away from it.

I think both of those issues suggest that you may be leaving the goats in an electric net for too long.  The fence thing because you're probably getting so much grounding from growth that it's not staying hot enough (and this will wear down your battery charge, making the chance of a shock lower as well I guess), and they're potentially eating everything that's desireable in an area before moving onto a tree (they also may just like eating these trees, in which case, fence them out?), so keep moving them to areas where they can eat things they prefer to trees.


Bear in mind that I say this as a new small ruminant keeper, but obsessive researcher and I've done as much research/classes as possible about both managing small ruminants and fencing.  

I rotate large paddocks and maintain a 6 ft fence.   Though, once the goats are used to the 6 ft fence, they seem to stay within 4ft ones. I don’t use electric.

Hi laurel,
Thanks for your thoughts and trouble shooting.
My fence tester only reads up to 8k and I only ever see it at about 4k, sometimes 6k. But that seems to be hot enough, when the goats respect it.
I am moving their fence about every week and a half, when they've eaten things down. I'm trying to keep it in mostly grassy areas because they will kill any small trees around. These aren't planted trees, but still I don't think they should be killed. We have a lot of wild persimmon here and in the spring the bark was soft so they stripped them bare. Same with the junipers , which are not such a concern here.

My main issue is the fence charger from Premier 1. It's the Intellishock 60. It's never been very reliable, even though it's less than a year old. It won't hold a charge more than a few days if I leave it on at night, so I've been turning it off at night and hence a big problem when the goats figured this out. Probably I should invest in a second charger, but I'm not really feeling this system of goat fencing is a very good one no matter how much money is thrown at it.
Plus, I had that same charger on my chicken fence the other day and the tester read 6k on the fence but there was zero shock when I touched it. The company said it's because the ground is dry. So here's another potential pitfall of the moveable fence system.

In the old days my goats would stay in the fence no matter what, but they've since decided it's worth checking the shock to see if they can get out.

If I had more resources to invest in creating strong fencing here I would do it. Moveable paddocks sounds like a smart system. I'm trying to make what I have work without a lot of extra cost and having trouble finding the solutions that would allow me to keep the goats. Sure wish I could see it.

Rachel McCarty wrote:Hi laurel,
Thanks for your thoughts and trouble shooting.
My fence tester only reads up to 8k and I only ever see it at about 4k, sometimes 6k. But that seems to be hot enough, when the goats respect it.
I am moving their fence about every week and a half, when they've eaten things down. I'm trying to keep it in mostly grassy areas because they will kill any small trees around. These aren't planted trees, but still I don't think they should be killed. We have a lot of wild persimmon here and in the spring the bark was soft so they stripped them bare. Same with the junipers , which are not such a concern here.

My main issue is the fence charger from Premier 1. It's the Intellishock 60. It's never been very reliable, even though it's less than a year old. It won't hold a charge more than a few days if I leave it on at night, so I've been turning it off at night and hence a big problem when the goats figured this out. Probably I should invest in a second charger, but I'm not really feeling this system of goat fencing is a very good one no matter how much money is thrown at it.
Plus, I had that same charger on my chicken fence the other day and the tester read 6k on the fence but there was zero shock when I touched it. The company said it's because the ground is dry. So here's another potential pitfall of the moveable fence system.

In the old days my goats would stay in the fence no matter what, but they've since decided it's worth checking the shock to see if they can get out.

If I had more resources to invest in creating strong fencing here I would do it. Moveable paddocks sounds like a smart system. I'm trying to make what I have work without a lot of extra cost and having trouble finding the solutions that would allow me to keep the goats. Sure wish I could see it.

Frustrating.  May I ask what part of the world you're in?  for us, we have clay soil and often get rain weekly so don't have much of an issue with the ground drying out. We too have the intellishock 60, but haven't been using it for very long.  I'm not sure what your situation is, or what specific net you're using, but a number of the premier 1 nets allow for alternating postive/ground wires to be run versus requiring an active ground through the soil, but I believe those would require a different energizer.  May eliminate your issues with not enough ground contact.

I suppose another solution which certainly isn't free but as far as affordable options goes, pretty straightforward.  That would be to run a long rectangular field (t posts plus high tensile woven wire or whatever type of field fencing you would use) with side boundaries maybe a few feet closer together than your present net length.  Run a plug in fence charger with those big long ground rods hammered into the ground, and a line running along the top of the fence, and maybe a foot up off the ground on the inside.  Then all you have to do is cross fence with 2 electric nets and work the goats down the field.  You could easily do this leapfrogging with 3 nets in total.  Then all you need to do is use jumpers to transfer power from that high hot wire to your nets.

In my experience, in general, versions of the cheap/fast/good triangle apply in most situations(you get 2). In the fencing situation, you're probably looking at cheap/effective/easy.  You can make an effective and easy fence, but it won't be cheap.  You can make a cheap and easy fence, but it won't be effective, you can make a cheap and effective fence, but it won't be easy.