Hooray for Good Fencing

Finally, the goat bucks are fenced apart from the does again.

We are thrilled to have a new section of fencing in place. Most of this "new" pasture was enclosed with high tensile wire when we first moved here. While we kept the interspersed electric fence wires hot, this made a good enclosure for horses, but not for our ruminant population.

Now that our good friend Jeff and his sidekick Jerry have stretched sheep-and-goat fence in place of the high tensile wires, we have a solid goat enclosure. True, it still has gaps at the bottom that will allow young kids through, but I like to have spaces through which the livestock guardian dogs can move easily.

Indeed, the coyotes have been ringing the farm on three sides of late when they start up their yammering chorus at dusk. I feel safer when the dogs can reach all of our land. Where the dogs roam, the coyotes do not venture. (The coyotes have plenty to eat beyond the perimeter of this farm.)

Since the field fence enclosing the home pasture, our last existing woven wire enclosure, is crumbling with age, the goats have been running together as one herd for some weeks now. This was fine when the does were in season and open for breeding, but Marcie is big enough with kids that she has slowed some of late. And while both of our Nubian does were bred at the same time as Marcie, they both came into season again recently.

Come next breeding season, we will be able to control breeding once again and to choose which buck covers which doe. For now, we are relieved to simply have the goat bucks contained. Now that they are a herd of two (except when the twin kids wriggle in to roam with them), the pair is getting along better. When they were competing for the does' attention, the elder buck, Hank, was stern about keeping young Studebaker in line.