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EVERYONE tells me goats are horrible because they're escape artists. I've read about no climb fencing and t posts. Is that the only thing that works?

The way we started we got 3 doe kids 2 and 3 months old
They had the run of the whole Acre
It was a wooded area so we had to provide them free choice hay because they cleaned all of the browse out
When they were about 15 months old we purchased a 3 month old buckling and put him with them
He was not able to breed them for 3 months
We left him with them but started to prepare a separate area for him
After the first kids we moved him
He was by himself for a few months
We wethered one of the buck kids and put him with him
They were together for over a year before we bought a second buck to breed some of the first crop of doe kids

You just need secure fencing
I've never had an issue with keeping mine in
Just keep them well fed

Use woven wire fence instead of welded wire
It's better

I would, ultimately, like to get a couple does that are already bred and experienced in the matter. Or at least one that is bred and has had at least a couple kids before, and maybe another younger doe. Might be a better way to ease into this that way. And then a buck at some point, probably not right away. And if there's a buckling that I really like from a breeding, I'd probably make that a whether and let it be a pet/companion for the buck.

Thanks for the awesome advice on the fencing! :]
On the matter of hay. Now I'm really only familiar with horses. But for goats, can you provide them with a round bale of coastal hay, and they be happy? I don't really like doing that with horses because of the way that their guts work, but I wonder if it would work for the goats. Plus, I can imagine climbing all over it would be great fun for them for a while. lol

YES -- goat & chicken math are alike....except, goats are so very cute, so very cuddly, so very keepable!!

Round bales -- what you want to be very careful with is that the goats will eat "into" the round and then collapse can occur. Goats have been suffocated like this...especially the small ones as they all love to crawl into/onto things where the do not belong. Properly used, rounds can work.

OneFineAcre said:

An acre is enough room to have Bucks and does separate
I had close to 20 at one point on an Acre

Click to expand...

You should get an "ENABLER AWARD" for this

Oh my word! Honestly, this doesn't surprise me too much. Silly mischievous goats. lol I'll have to read up on how to prevent that.

Lol! And yes, enabler indeed. After I read that last night, I looked over to my husband and said "wow! This person had nearly 20 goats on her 1 acre." I got a very fast and stern, "NO" in response. Silly man. But this was also not long after I said something along the lines of "wow! Think of how many chickens we could have on an acre!"

I cut a cow panel in half, had my hay man park a round bale in a corner, then put the panel halves up to make a square "hay ring". I tied it together with hay string. My sheep can stick their heads through to eat the hay. After they eat into the bale, I have to pull hay off the top so they can reach it. I put a small tarp over the top, held down with bungees to keep the rain off.

Smart! I especially like the tarp idea! :] Thank you.