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> They arrive early and open the trailer. The goats jump out, ready to eat, as Ms. Malmberg watches that they don’t stray. The team sets up an electric fence to
by belorn 5y ago
> They arrive early and open the trailer. The goats jump out, ready to eat, as Ms. Malmberg watches that they don’t stray. The team sets up an electric fence to confine the goats and their meals to a specific area overnight.
Doing the same thing with deers would be much harder. Keeping deer confined in a specific area in order to concentrate the grazing requires much better fences, and when they inadvertently escape it takes much more work to bring them back.
My biggest questions with this setup is how they keep the cost down from setting up an electric fence in order to create a good fire wall. Electric fences are generally very labor intensive, and we seems to be talking about steep slopes in some cases.
- w-ll 5y agoCould it be done with just a shock collar and a geo-fence?
- mikeg8 5y agoShock collars are expensive when you need 50+ of them, plus keeping them all charged etc. the current method of portable net-type fencing is very efficient.
- jdavis703 5y agoThat seems unnecessarily cruel to draw an invisible line that’s always changing and shock them for violating the line. The reason this is ok for dogs is because they’re in a fixed location and can learn the boundaries. The goats on the other hand are always being moved to new areas.
- Swizec 5y ago> My biggest questions with this setup is how they keep the cost down from setting up an electric fence in order to create a good fire wall They don’t. Friend of mine owns some land north of SF and was quoted $5000 to have goats come eat the grass. I suspect his land is too small to be worth the hassle for the goat service provider so he was quoted the go away price.
- mikeg8 5y agoThat price could be perfectly reasonable depending on the lot size and vegetation density. To have dozers or mechanical fuel removal out there could easily been more money and if you can’t get fire insurance but live in the wild land urban interface, several grand a year in fuel removal is going to be par for the course.
- Swizec 5y agoYeah totally. It was ridiculously not worth it for him, but I understand why the business would rather work with clients at that price level than deal with someone who can do it by hand in a few hours and just happens to be lazy.
- GravitasFailure 5y agoThere are more mobile systems that are easier to set up quickly. I don't know how they'd fare against a herd of cattle, but they seem to contain the goats around here just fine.
- mikeg8 5y agoThe electric fences are obviously temporary so not nearly as labor intensive as a permanent electric setup. A single person can run a good length of fencing by themselves if the fence line path is semi cleared. It’s like staking in a 2.5’ tall volleyball net. The goats know it’s electric so avoid contact; it is less stable than you’d think.
- jbotz 5y ago> Keeping deer confined in a specific area in order to concentrate the grazing requires much better fences I'm sorry, but this just wrong. Goats are the most difficult animals to keep fenced in... they climb just about anything (the fence itself or something else that will help them get over it) and they are much stronger than deer or most other similar-sized animals, and thus also much more likely to break a fence. And they are smarter, too, and will figure out some way to out. There's an old saying: the fence that will hold goats holds water.
- mikeg8 5y agoYou may want to reevaluate this. Deer easily jump 5’ fences, goats can be contained with a sturdy 3.5’ fence. I own 4 goats that are contained on 2 acres… regularly see deer coming and going as they please, jumping over a fence the goats can’t get through.and a large buck deer is way stronger and taller than the biggest buck goat.
- swader999 5y agoI've seen deer jump six foot fences.
- kingkawn 5y agoWhere I live garden fences need to be 10’ high for deer