Ivory’s Totally Secure Goat Fence
1. Put up worthless chicken fence.
2. Get sick of it and tear it down, vowing to put up a new one so the monsters won’t kill your garden and fruit trees.
3. Fail.
4. Borrow MIL’s boss’s brother’s manual transmission, diesel, 16-ft flatbed with a lift and drive 20 mph to the Tractor Supply, never killing the engine (Thank you, Jesus) yet lightly grinding the gears twice. (I would love to show you a picture of the truck, but the tank lot was closed. Below is MIL’s boss’s brother’s company.)
5. Arrive at Tractor Supply and realize that you can’t possibly park this monstrosity, so you take up six parking spaces so you don’t have to turn.
6. Find it impossible to remove the key. Struggle for a few minutes, then flag down a couple of good-ole-boys in the parking lot that look like they would know how to de-key a diesel truck the size of my house. Key successfully removed. Lessons given on key removal.
7. Enter Tractor Supply and ask for goat panel.
8. Laugh out loud when they show it to you, cause a lame goat on Bud Light could jump it backwards. Four feet? My MINI goats can jump that in a second. Must be meant to be electrified. Can’t do that.
9. Buy two 16ft long 5 ft high HORSE PANELS.
10. Bring mammoth truck around to the back of Tractor Supply. Again, cannot remove key and must get elderly salesman to give lessons.
11. Help elderly salesman get panels over the lift that neither of us know how to use, into the bed of the truck and drive home at 20 mph. (Never been in a car that needed 4th gear before 30 mph.)
12. Have mild nervous breakdown trying to turn left out of the lot, calling on all the saints that can be remembered whilst adrenaline is pumping. Therese, Teresa, Lewis, John of the Cross, Philomena, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mama Mary, Elizabeth, any relatives that can hear me, people who are holy that I don’t even know…all y’all pray I get back without wrecking, PLEASE!
12. Drop panels at the house and take mammoth truck back to tank lot. Thank whole host of heaven for their much appreciated assistance.
13. Again, cannot remove key. Struggle for a few minutes. Pray some more. Finally get key out.
14. Return key to MIL’s boss’s brother who can’t believe I didn’t call stranded on the side of the road. The phrase “super woman” was used.
15. Go home and bang in U posts in a relatively straight line, attach panel with zip ties and install an adjust-a-gate from Depot.
Ivory
I’m laughing so hard I’m crying right now! You really are superwoman! And an inspiration!
Good for you for managing to drive the truck without mishap!
Hope the horse panels do the trick and keep the goats where they are supposed to be.
You might want to replace/reinforce those zip ties with something stronger, something metal. I’ve had the neighbor’s goats eat them to tear down fences they needed to remove in order to destroy my baby trees… Actually, I’m not quite sure what you mean by a zip tie. I used cable ties. Though they make a *zip* sound when being snugged, they might be something entirely different. (Also, cable ties tended to wear out after 3-4 years in the California sunshine…) I loved livestock paneling – easiest fencing I ever installed. And my feed store delivered, so I didn’t have to drive a flatbed. Congratulations on doing that! Cool!
Wow! You go, girl!
Didn’t you just love sitting up that high over the road in the big truck?
2 words: A mazing!
4 more: You are my hero!
I’m so impressed, and so entertained! Nicely done, super girl!
I’ve done a lot of things in my life including moving a soaking wet 16 x 16 foot carpet all by myself to the curb while swearing under my breath at my husband (now ex-husband), putting 2 kayaks on top of my car neither of which weigh less than 50 pounds, and taking 3 kids under the age of 4 on the train and then walking a mile to see fireworks along with 2 million other people (all without losing one of them which I consider to be nearly miraculous given that I only have 2 hands and one of them was holding a baby). But I have never driven a flatbed. I like it!
I can honesty say this is the most entertaining DIY project story I have seen yet, hey at least you got the fence up 😉
Good Going Girl!
You ARE a superwoman! Way to go!
Get on wit you baaaad self Girl !! You ROCK !!
lolol It’s posts like this that are the reason LHITS is, and I think always will be, my abso favourite blog.
I’m wishing we could all hook up for a coffee; what a hoot!
BTW Ivory, shit-hot effort, Girrrl, we’re all soooo proud of you!
Good job Ivory! Now you deserve a break. And I don’t mean break….down over the goats. Take a deep breath and pat yourself on the back for showing them you could do it. You are to be commended for your perserverance.
Zip ties are my new favorite tool! I just discovered the joy of them this year building my vertical gardens and now I use them for everything! (I actually used one to close my pants when I popped the button off while camping….lol) Long live zip ties!
planetAnge, Thank you! I sometimes wonder whether we should put in less personality and more tutorials. But a comment like this settles it.
I laughed so hard I was in tears and stitches when I read this – this is sooooooo me – just somebody else portraying me! Do you also get the “Go to town and get me this part for ….., ” knowing good and well that the male person speaking the words must be TOTALLY out of his mind, you tell him it would be best if he goes – ’cause you know what is going to happen – female walks into parts store, clerk asks all kinds of technical questions you have no answer to or any idea how to guess at – the whole time fussing under your breath – TOLD him to come do this himself. Get the part, knowing good and well it ain’t right – take it home to be told it is wrong and have him storm back to town for your lack of “common sense” or worse yet sent back to town to try again? I have just started using the opening phrase to the clerk – “Ok, he sent the wife to “get the part” – do you know where this is going?” and the clerks just give me a BIG friendly smile and pull up a stool knowing this is going to take a while.
I just found your site and am having a wonderful time nosing around – wonderful information and can’t wait to try the lotion bars.
Ah. Goat stories. I hope yopur story ended better than mine. We built something similar. Cody climbed over it. Made it taller. Climbed over it. I think it was 10 ft high by the time we got him to stay in, and then he cried so much we let him run free. He ate everything but the weeds. we aquired him for but all in all was a good goat. I miss him sometimes.
you refer to your goats as mini goats, but i have seen references to dwarf goats and pygmy goats elsewhere. is there a difference, or just many differnt names for the same animal?
Dwarf and pygmy each refer to a specific goat breed. Nigerian Dwarf and Pygmy. Your goat can be small by having either of these in them. “Mini” is just a catch-all. My white goat is a mutt with lots of Pygmy in her. My mouthy brown headed mutt is boer, nubian, and nigerian dwarf.
Just a suggestion:
When we got our Nubians last January we had all tension wire fences for our horses. To keep the goats in their paddock we simply attached 40 inch (I think, got it at TSC. It’s the shorter of the two they sell) page wire to the fence posts with fence staples. There are 2 strands of tension wire above the page wire and the goats have never tried to climb over them. This may be a cheaper alternative than cattle panels if you’re doing a large area. We have about an acre and a half for the goats to browse in. Goats typically respect a single wire, so the combination of page and wire strands does a good job keeping them in. Three hundred feet of page wire cost about $140, steel posts are cheap.
CZ