What are the chances?? (doeling could get pregnant?)

[Juliana Goodwin]

Hi guys,

 

I am having a helluva time trying to separate my goats.  We brought home the doeling maybe two weeks ago now, with the intention of splitting Penny (my adult doe) with her, and putting the buck and wether in another pasture.

 

Every attempt I've made has failed!  They always stayed in the fencing before now, but apparently they were only staying in because they were happy. Now they break out constantly because they all want to be together.

 

I spent all weekend stringing hot-wire on the buck side to try to keep the boys out of the girls' pasture, and it worked for two days, but now the girls have somehow broken in with the boys.  My pastures are big and I can't always even find the holes.

 

We are going to brush hog the back 5 acres and build a pure electric pen back there for the boys but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a month to get it up.  How likely is it that he would really breed the little one?  She is like 2 1/2 months old and tiny.  (he is almost 6 months old now).

 

[Juliana Goodwin]

Well the good news is SW Florida is probably about as flat as anywhere would ever be. But I know what you're saying about crawling under at the dips, that's how they plowed out from under my woven wire fence. Other good news is that the boys ARE respecting the hotwire, it was the girls who got through and I didn't see them do it, so they may have gone around it and not through it (there is a way to do that)

Wonder if we could think of some kind of compromise...like a low woven wire fence w/ a few strands of hot on top and one strand of hot at the bottom on the inside. I think we need something like 5' high to really discourage predation, we have panthers, big bobcats, coyotes, feral dogs, free ranging dogs (why they sleep in the barn now, b/c I don't think our fences would save them) not to mention the gators....

I just have to think of something I can afford lol.

[Deborah Niemann-Boehle]

Woven wire with a strand of electric at nose height is a really good option for bucks. If you ever have one that clears the top of the fence, you can also run a strand of electric about four inches above the top of the woven wire, effectively making the fence taller.

The problem with strands of electric is not how many -- it's how close together they are and how close to the ground they are. You have to have the strands about six inches apart to keep adults from going through, but some will still take the zap if there is enough motivation. Unless you have perfectly flat terrain (which we don't) there will be dips under the fence, and the goats will find them, and they will go under it. We've taken strands of wire and made our own "web" to hand down into the bigger dips, but they always find new ones. You have to have the bottom wire only about six inches from the ground, which means you will have to really stay on top of weed wacking. It also means that if one goat gets brave enough to run through, it's really easy to wind up with a wire on the ground shorted out, so then everyone else can run out without getting zapped.

I know there are people out there who say you can use electric fencing with goats, but I would never encourage anyone to do it. It only takes one goat to teach the rest of them how to do it. If you know you have two goats that will go through electric, it really doesn't matter how you string it, they're going to go through. They've already decided they don't mind getting zapped, and they'll teach their kids to go through it.

[Juliana Goodwin]

Jeez that's really discouraging. This was a horse farm too, but they used field fencing (woven wire). Parts of it are just old and saggy and so the goats can push under it when they are determined. I ran a hot wire along the bottom of the fence between the girls/boys pastures and it is still working for the boys so far. They sure would have a zapped wee wee if they tried to breed one of the girls!!

Although the boys also rammed under a brand new fence I just built which was 2x4 woven wire and stretched with a come-along.

I put up hot wire at 14 inches to stop the body rubbing on the newer fence and it has worked great...

I was intending to build a pasture (maybe 1 acre or so) just for the bucks down back, but they need good predator protection because we have all sorts of big predators here. After a bit of researching, I planned to build approx 6 strand electric fence. Did your fences have that many strands?

I almost bought one of those net fences from Premier, but they are so expensive I could fence in my whole back five acres for that. Plus I need to fence for horses, too, since those are coming.

Does distance help at all? because once the boys move down back they will be pretty far from the girls & they would then have the electric fence plus one or two woven wire fences between them and the girls.

[Deborah Niemann-Boehle]

Don't waste your time or money on stringing electric. This was a horse farm with all electric pastures when we moved here, and it just does not work with goats, especially if there is a goat in heat or they see something tasty on the other side. It only takes one to go through, and the others will follow. If you want to use electric, you can try Electronet -- a temporary fence by Premier. But you should always keep two fences between bucks and does, whenever possible. If you have to have a single fence, then the bucks should be behind livestock panels. That's the only thing I've found that keeps them contained. They'll stick their front legs through woven wire and can come incredibly close to actually breeding a doe because woven wire is stretchy. If you can just buy four livestock panels, you can make a movable pen like WG4 on here. She has pictures of her pen in the forum.

[Juliana Goodwin]

Okay...well, I've got the girls in the barn-yard area where the chickens go out during the day and so far every one is behaving. This puts two fences between the pairs and they are a little farther apart.

I still don't know how the girls got into the boy's pasture through all that hotwire, but it does seem to be holding the boys. The girls could just stay in the barn yard until the new pasture is built, there is pretty good grass in there. No browse, really, but I can put branches in their stall at night.

If this doesn't work I have a tiny paddock (maybe 5x10 feet) off one of the stalls that I can put them in if I could find some hay they would eat (grass hay in these parts is pale or yellow and stalky and usually they just won't eat it) I found some good orchard for awhile but it just ran out. I could alternate every day who got to go out to pasture because the fences on that paddock are quite high, I don't think anyone could possibly get through it.

She's a little doll and I surely don't want anything bad to happen to her, I sure didn't know they'd be this determined to stay together...I guess the 3 of them got kind of "herd bound" as they say about horses, living here alone for 6 months together..

[Jordana Heath]

Very likely. She can be fertile pretty early, and he is plenty old enough to breed. Watch close, because it could kill her to end up bred so little (she is too small to have a kid). Maybe have a shelter with a very tall pen (6 foot dog kennel maybe?) screened in to keep the boys in for a month or so until the girls get used to not being with them. It won't hurt them to be penned for a while and fed hay.  Once they are used to being separated it shouldn't be quite so bad except when the does are in heat. Some people keep the bucks in smaller, containable pens all the time because of the chance of does getting in or bucks getting out. Odds are she is still too small to go into heat, but it is possible.