New electric fence

The poor goats were getting hungry because they'd totally devoured every living thing in their first corral, except the cedars, which not even bugs like. We were a little concerned because it takes a lot of time, effort and cost to build a new corral with field fence, not mention the permanence. After all, we're not trying to clear cut a field. Just thin things out, to make it more useable.

With this in mind, I started researching new options such as avalanche fence, panels and electric fence in an effort to find a cheaper, portable solution.

I figured the best place to start my research would be with how people who rent out goats to clear brush do it. I checked several of their websites and in each picture, I could see a white, meshy kind of fence that I'd never seen in stores before.

After a lot of searching, I finally figured out that it was electric netting. It's almost like the wire light nets that you use on bushes at Christmas. I was excited to find out that it's fairly inexpensive. For about 500 feet of fence and a battery/energizer kit, I paid about $500 as compared to $600+ for 660 feet of field fence (without posts or hardware).

Here we are starting out on the experiment. As you can see, the goats will have their work cut out for them.

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The first step was to use the bush hog and bulldozer to clear a fence line because electric fences don't work well with a lot of brush growing up around them. We were able to cut all the trees and bushes and clear fence line in a couple hours of hard work.

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Next we layed out the net, to get a rough idea of how long it would be, and where we might have trouble spots with rocks, trees, etc.

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Luckily, the built in posts went in the ground easily and held the tension well.

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Sawyer was my hard working helper. By lunchtime we'd completely enclosed the area. We were kind of worried about whether it was working because I'd forgotten to bring my voltmeter. So we decided to do it the old fashioned way, putting an old dry stick on the fence. There was a enough voltage to feel a little tingle when you rubbed the stick along the line. Nothing painful. Just enough to make your skin prickle a little bit. However, we were sure it was working after we put the goats in and one of them tried to follow us. Poor Gracie touched the fence and jumped a couple feet in the air and yelped. We were sad for her, but glad the fence worked. I'm going down tonight to check it out and see if it's still working. fingers are crossed!

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