Looking for advise please. We are preparing our 4 acre hobby farm for 4 registered NDs due here next month. I have cleared and prepared a 900 ft paddock fenced with 4 inch spaced woven wire fence 48 inches high with a shock wire on top of that to make it a 5 ft fence. We also have a very solid 120 sq ft shelter almost completed within that paddock. Our goats are comprised of a doe with a doeling and buckling wether plus a buck. Given the weather has been so atrocious for building its been a struggle to get this in place in a month since the ground thawed and in between the rain. My question is how important is it to separate the buck from the does right now? I understand milk quality is better if they are apart but are there other reasons that I should take into account ie a buck head butting the others etc.? Eventually I plan a paddock within the large paddock to separate the buck but time is getting very short for our new arrivals. I was hoping they could all shelter in the shed I built until I build a smaller one for the bucks.
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What a beautiful area! And I love the goat house. Good luck. I do hope the weather cooperates with you!
I try and formulate a 'battle plan' for major projects but as usual soon as there is 'enemy contact' that plan is tossed out the window it seems! I think I can add 150 feet of woven wire at the back of this paddock then a line of Gallagher fence with 9000 volts in it so I am hoping that will dissuade our buck enough. This is our shed I'm building and the buck paddock will be in the background. By adding 150 feet of fence and a gate two bucks will have 150 x 150 feet to themselves. The back up electric fence will require me burying some electrical wire out to the shed to power the charger..... another job on my never ending list of goat related tasks!
It's awesome that you have such a big pasture for them and have done so much to improve it for the goats! You still want to sub-divide using the temporary fencing to prevent parasites and best utilize the pasture. Plus you can use that to avoid having them share a fenceline.
It is a good idea to have a solid fence between the buck and doe pens. However, you don't want them to share a fenceline. I have heard of bucks breeding does through a woven wire fence, and I saw a buck here come within about an inch of succeeding. The doe had put her back end right up against the fence, and the buck had stuck his head and front legs through the fence and was mounting her and was extremely close to actually breeding her! He had the woven wire totally stretched out over her back. It was very impressive, and it convinced me that they cannot share a fenceline. I wish I'd had a camera but it was before the days when I had a cell phone with me all the time, and I was just moving as fast as I could to get that doe out of there.
Thanks for your pointers Deborah.
This goat endeavour was to have happened last year but due to a failed septic system that had to be replaced it was put off until now. It has been a scramble to get everything in place so we don't lose another year. We are fortunate to have an understanding breeder who's been very patient while I get this containment system built and she has been working with us to make this happen. Our paddock is almost an acre in size in that the fence is 900 linear feet encompassing that paddock. We have a varied terrain here with seasonal water issues to contend with so a goat shelter needs to be where it can remain as a shelter and not a swamp. I was part of your recent online parasite seminar so I have learned about proper deworming in a healthy manner and have gone so far as to overseed Trefoil (among other grasses) to increase the tannin forage on that paddock. I chainsawed out that acre size fenced area last fall out of standing timber so there is also a lot of regenerating browse available as well as grasses. Clearing a paddock, erecting that fence (braced with 10 foot long 8 inch wide cedar posts and associated hand dug post holes as deep as I can get them in the ground), building the small 120 sq ft shed all while meeting the municipal permit process and dealing with a cold wet spring was getting overwhelming all in one month. I started digging post holes in late April and the ground was still frozen. June was when we agreed to take the goats so I was doing my best to meet that time frame. I was hoping I could get our goats here and continue working but your comments and others I've received in Facebook regarding the doelings and the heat cycle have made it clear I have to push harder and get this paddock split. I guess the thought of hacking out 8 more post holes when I thought I was good to go was not something I wanted to hear right now! If I had too I do have a couple of sets of Gallagher electric netting that I could incorporate in our paddock if it will work on a buck while a doe is in a heat cycle close by. Our breeder has discussed with me releasing the does now and then the bucks later once I have split the paddock with the same woven wire fence material I mentioned. The bucks will be an intact buck and a compatible wether for company so I can build a simple shelter for those two fellas fairly easily it was their fenced area that I just had not gotten my head wrapped around properly and which was stressing me out. I am grateful that you could help with what I should be shooting for in our paddock design.
You absolutely need to keep the buck separate because you never know when the doe or doeling might come into heat. Nigerians sometimes cycles year round, and you just don't know if these does will or not. You also don't know when your doeling will reach sexual maturity. That doesn't usually happen until they're at least six months, but I have seen two 3-month-old doelings in heat in my 17 years of raising them, and I've seen a few sad stories online of someone having an 8-month-old giving birth, usually via c-section or with great difficulty.
It's good that the kids were dam-raised because if they're really small they can fit through 4" fencing. However, dam-raised kids don't usually want to leave mom. The buck will need a buddy though, which is a good job for the wether. However, if he can see his mother from his pen, he will likely figure out how to get through the fencing if he is small enough.
Did you mean that the paddock is 900 square feet or one side is 900 feet long? If it is 900 square feet (approximately 30 x 30), the goats will eat through that grass really quickly. Once the grass is shorter than 4 inches, it becomes a buffet of worm larvae so that the goats will be eating from their toilet, and you will have problems with internal parasites.
Since you refer to the paddock as "large," I'm hoping you mean that it's 900 feet long on one side. In that case, you could use temporary electric fencing to separate it into smaller paddocks for rotational grazing. However, with only two goats per pen, you could just use four livestock panels attached at the corners. This is how one of our members did that -- http://nigeriandwarfgoats.ning.com/forum/topics/movable-pens