Friday, May 6, 2011

Electric goat fence

UPS delivered my Premier 1 electro netting 2 days ago.  I was pretty excited to put it to use.  I told you earlier I'd been letting the goats and donkeys loose in the yard so they would have access to more lush green grass than what is in their pasture.  The only problem with that was I had to stay with them to be sure they didn't eat our fruit trees and flowers, which they tried to do many times.  It was getting harder and harder to keep all 22 of them where I could keep an eye on them. 

Yesterday I experimented with the fence.  I enclosed the piece of our yard closest to their permanent fence.  I was a bit nervous watching them get closer and closer to the netting.  I've had a fear of electric fences since I was a kid and got stuck to one at a neighbor's horse farm.  My sister had to pull me off the fence and felt the charge through me.  I remember that so clearly.  Of course the voltage on this fencing isn't near what I touched as a child.  Still, it was hard watching the goats (especially the kids) touch their noses to it and run away screaming.  Our dog, Lex, was the worst.  He screamed like someone put a taser to him. 

 It's been kind of hard to watch but it seems like everyone is catching on.   Ummm, except for Shiloh, my big, sweet doofus, Shiloh.
I bet he's touched it 10 to 15 times.  I'm beginning to wonder if he likes it.  Each time he touches it he takes off in a run and kicks his back legs up in the air.  It's not long before he has his nose to it again. Silly boy.

The chickens, however, seem to have caught on very quickly.  I haven't seen one of them touch it yet.  Maybe they sense the electric without touching it. 

I wonder how long it will take this big doofus to forget and touch it.

3 comments:

  1. I guess you don't have to mow in that area now, right?

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  2. Hysterical! I can picture him now. My heavens, the fence you touched as a child must have been one serious electric fence! Our cows can sense the electric, but every once in a while, one of the calfs slips through it and is terrified to come back. They always do though, they miss mama too much.
    Em~

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  3. Hey, I just saw this... Tim is working with ours today I think. Yours looks great in the pics. I wonder if Stormy Fred will have the same compulsion to test the fence as Shiloh?? Would not surprise me one bit! Phyllis

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