Closing in your sheep and goats at night

I have a question for everyone.

I have 3 St. Croix sheep and 2 Kiko goats. I just moved them out to a summer pasture. It's approximately 135' by 140' chicken wire on T-posts with fiberglass support posts because chicken wire is less than ideal, it has grass, autumn olive, pine trees, etc. Ideally I would run them in a much smaller electric fence pasture, but that is a story for another time.

We usually put them in a small shelter at night, the goats shelter is not finished yet so I was walking them to the barn and locking the sheep in their shelter in the pasture.

My question is, do I need to lock them up at night? My thought is that if a predator gets through the chicken wire it will get through the snow fencing (my dad built his shelter, I am either scrapping it or repurposing it soon) on the shelter.

Now the concern is that I don't have a LGD. I have other dogs that I take down there with me when I check the livestock.

Any advice is appreciated,  I don't know if an LGD would be ideal in my situation.

As always, the devil is in the details.  Where do you live? How much land is involved. What is the fencing like?  As you respond, ask your neighbors with livestock what they think.


Oh yes, welcome to Permies.

I am in West Michigan, about 30 minutes from the lake.

I am on 30 acres, the livestock pasture is on an approximately 11 acre parcel.

As I said, the fencing is chicken wire.

One question I have is about the presence of predators.  Also what kind of country surrounds your place.

I think you are on the right track. When we take animals into our care, we become responsible for their well being. A piece of that is making sure they are safe.

What kind of predators are in your area will determine what kind of changes might need to be made. A livestock guardian dog is one good method... but might be overkill for just 5 animals. Building a stronger shelter like you mentioned, might be a good option.

The type of predators will determine how strong and what kinds of materials you could use.

I wouldn't say our predator population is heavy. We can hear Coyotes during the summer. Have had a bobcat stalking our chickens one time in a terrible rainstorm. Our problems have mostly been with our chickens, opossums and raccoons.

We did put a hot wire about 6 inches above the ground roughly 6 inches inside their pasture. It fixed the issue we were having of them escaping under the fence and kept out my German Shepherd when she tried to follow me into the pasture one day.

We have a high predator pressure: cougars, bobcats, foxes, raccoons, opossums, coyotes, black bear, hawks, eagles, owls, local dogs running wild... We're on 29+ acres, in the Missouri Ozarks, and it's impossible for us to dig post holes or pound tposts through the rocky clay, by hand. We have been using a mixture of cattle and hog panels. The hog panels (because the bottom several rows are close-together and keep the little ones in) are for the female & baby goats, and sheep, while the cattle panels (because they're taller and less 'Houdini-friendly') are for the bucks. I don't use goat panels, because they are twice the price. I don't lock in my 4leggers - only my birds. The only 4legger I've lost, so far, was a lamb that was bitten by a copperhead. In fact, local dogs and snakes have done the most damage to our livestock numbers.

I don't use chicken wire for much. It's too thin, and 'wimpy' for my concerns. I use hardware cloth - generously - to keep my birds safe.

It seems that the cattle & hog panels are sturdy enough to discourage the predators, who truly want to use the least energy, with the lowest risk of injury, to feed themselves, so they prefer to hunt wildlife smaller than they are, instead of dealing with my fencing. I would like to add some electric fencing, more to keep the bucks in, than anything.

Carla Burke wrote: predators, who truly want to use the last energy, with the lowest risk of injury, to feed themselves, so they prefer to hunt wildlife smaller than they are, instead of dealing with my fencing.  

This has long been my philosophy, lowest risk, least expenditure of energy.  I think an LGD who barks is a big deterrent.  Why would a lion want to bother with fighting my large dog(s) when he can go up the road to a neighbor’s place?

The size of the dog is evident in the barking.  It takes a large chest to make a deep tone….

When I have been faced with digging animals accessing chickens, I have buried chicken wire an inch or two deep, extending outwards outwards from the vertical wall/fence of the pen.  The horizontal wire needs to be well anchored to the vertical wire.