Goats

We have an area in front of the barn and chicken coop that is fenced off and it is full of very tall weeds. I commented to Wolf that we needed some goats to mow the area down. To my surprise he said, "ok". Now, I've gone back and forth if I want goats or not. Goats are a PIA! They are escape artists and get into everything! Don't let those cute calm goats in the petting zoo fool you.

So I decided that if I were to get goats they would have to be dwarfs. As is my usual, I was perusing craigslists farm/garden section and came across 2 10wk old Nigerian dwarfs goats in my town that needed a new home. The actual town does not allow goats unless they are therapy animals and you get a variance for them. This is what the people tried to do but the city wanted over $800 for the variance and their neighbor wanted them to build a solid fence between their houses so that her dog wouldn't see the goats and bark at them! They decided it wasn't worth the money or fight to keep them.

They are the sweetest little PIAs ever. I had to re-fence all of the gates with fencing to cover any area over 3" wide. Any spot I missed the goats were quick to point them out. I came home more than once to the goats wandering around the driveway area.

The only area we had for them to sleep in is a stall of the shedrow. It only had a short gate on it so it made me very nervous about predators coming in the night to feast on my little goats. I got to work on changing the electric fence over from keeping horses in to keeping predators out. I took off the cord from around the back yard where we don't plan to keep horses and moved it to the bottom of the fence around the goat/chicken area. I plugged in our fence charger and... nothing. :-/ The light didn't even come on. I tested the plug in the shedrow to make sure it was working, it was. So I had to run out and buy a new charger. Got that connected, tested the fence (with an electric fence charger), and had voltage. I still have a few modifications to do to it, but I feel a lot better about the goats sleeping out there now.

Artemis

Holly