Fencing that actually holds a Nigerian Dwarf

There is an old line that if a fence will not hold water it will not hold a goat. It is an exaggeration, but not by as much as you would like.

The problem with small goats

Most fencing advice assumes cattle or sheep. Nigerian Dwarfs are neither. They are small, flexible and persistent, and they go under and through rather than over. A plain wire fence that holds a cow is an open gate to a miniature goat. A standard ringlock built for sheep has apertures a kid walks through without breaking stride.

Kids are the real test. A four-week-old kid will find a gap you would swear was not there, get through it, then stand on the wrong side screaming for its mother while you rebuild your assumptions. Adults test differently — they lean, rub, stand on things and work at latches until something gives.

What works

• Small apertures. Mesh with openings small enough that a kid cannot put its head or shoulders through. Goat mesh or dog mesh with graduated or small squares is the usual choice; standard sheep ringlock is generally too open at the bottom.
• Height. Around a metre to 1.2 metres is plenty for a miniature breed. Height is rarely how they escape — but it matters for keeping dogs and foxes out, which is the other half of the job.
• Nothing to climb on, and no gaps at ground level. Run the mesh tight to the ground, and peg or pin it where the ground dips. A hollow under a fence line is where you will lose them.
• Posts closer than you think. Goats lean on fences constantly and a long unsupported span will bow out within a season. Tighter post spacing than you would use for sheep pays for itself.
• An offset hot wire. One live wire at about goat-chest height, set off the fence on an insulator, stops the leaning and rubbing that wrecks mesh. A second low wire discourages digging and testing at the base. Electric fencing on its own is not enough for goats — their coat insulates them and they learn to take one hit and go — but as a deterrent on top of solid mesh it is excellent.
• Strain the fence properly. A slack fence is a stretched fence within a month.

Gates are the weak point

Almost every escape comes back to a gate. The gap underneath a farm gate is goat-sized, the gap at the hinge end is kid-sized, and the latch is a puzzle that a bored goat has all day to solve.

Fix it by filling the gap under the gate with mesh, closing the hinge gap, and using a latch that needs two actions or a different grip to a nose — a chain and snap clip, or a slide bolt with a clip through it. Spring-loaded latches that a goat can nudge upward are not latches.

Make it a habit to close gates behind you even when you are coming straight back. Goats notice.

What does not work

The things that catch people out, over and over:

• Electric wire alone. A fleeced or woolly goat is well insulated, and a determined one will take the shock and keep going. Once it works out the fence can be beaten, it will beat it again.
• Plain wire or barbed wire. Neither is a barrier to something that goes under. Barbed wire also damages goats that try, which makes it the worst of both worlds.
• Sheep ringlock straight off the roll without a hot wire or a skirt at the base. It holds adults for a while and never holds kids.
• Portable electric netting as a permanent fence. Useful for short-term strip grazing under supervision, genuinely dangerous for horned goats and kids left in it unsupervised. It is a grazing tool, not a boundary.
• Repairing as you go. Patching the spot where they got out this week simply moves the test to the next weakest point. Walk the whole line and fix the standard, not the hole.

The things beside the fence

A pallet, a stump, a woodpile, a water trough, a stack of star pickets or a parked trailer beside a fence is a launch pad. So is a tree with a low fork. Walk your fence line looking at it from a goat's point of view and move anything within a body length of the wire.

The same goes inside the paddock: goats need something to climb, and they will use whatever you provide. Put the climbing frame in the middle, not against the boundary.

Before they arrive, not after

Fix your fencing before the goats come home. The first escape teaches them that escaping is possible, and that lesson is very hard to un-teach. A goat that has never got out mostly does not try. A goat that got out once will spend the rest of its life auditing your fence.

The practical order: fence the small paddock or yard they will live in first, get them home into that, and then extend. A secure small area beats a leaky large one every time, and goats need far less space than people assume — it is almost never acreage that limits you.

One last check

When you think you are finished, walk the whole boundary slowly and look at the bottom 300 millimetres. That strip is where you will lose them, and it is the strip nobody inspects.