Letting goats graze in the woods
Ever since we got goats, I've been building them a new "tractor"
every day out of cattle panels. At first, that effort seemed very
worthwhile, since I was moving the girls around to eat all of the
honeysuckle off our fencelines and barn. But once I ran out of easy
honeysuckle buffets, it seemed like twenty minutes of labor for half a
belly of so-so food might not be as efficient a use of my time.
Monday
afternoon, I decided to let the girls run out in the woods...and boy
did they love it! If I don't have to ensure that the honeysuckle is all
concentrated in one place, there's still quite a bit out there, maybe a
few weeks' worth within a stone's throw of the coop. The question is ---
will I regret letting our goats run wild outside our core homestead?
The worst-case scenario
is that a trespassing hunter will think Abigail is a deer, or that the
pack of wild dogs who roam through our woods will get past Lucy's
defenses and try to eat Artemesia up. More likely (but only slightly
less heart-wrenching) is the possibility that our girls will hop right
over the chicken-wire fences that surround our core homestead and start
chowing down on apple-tree twigs.
To be entirely honest,
our goats have gotten out and ended up free in the yard a few times
already. So far, they seem much more interested in oat leaves than in
apple trees, so I'm willing to risk a few nibbles as long as I'm right
here to catch them in the act. Chances are good that if Artemesia got
loose in the garden, she'd just end up on the porch, as she has before,
asking why we haven't come out to play, so I'll try letting them out
into the woods for longer today. Here's hoping our goats aren't too
capricious and that they behave!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hee hee, nice one.
How well marked as far as property line and NO TRESSPASSING is your place? If someone is coming via other wooded/wild property they may not know they are on yours. Some folk I know (wife's anti-hunting vegetarian aunts in Lee county) complained of hunters coming on their land, but after I looked in my view their property line is not well defined and their no trespassing signs faded and few between.
But yes, I'd hate to think of your goats being mistaken for deer. They are about the size of deer down there in south GA!
Don't worry about them munching the apple twigs. They will wait for either blossom set or fruit. They might even leave it alone long enough for you to dream of homegrown apples before they eat all the fruit, then girdle the tree sharpening their horns. I know mine do.
They got loose last weekend and ate 25 drying persimmons, all the amaranth seedheads drying, all the cabbage, broccoli, and most of the Chinese cabbage, trampled the carrots, and pulled most of the strawberry plants out of the sides of the rock wall. Gotta love goats.
my neighbors have their property lines surrounded with 3 strand electric fence to keep their goats in, and stray dogs, coyotes, tresspassers out. be sure to get a good fence charger. the cheaper ones are not powerful enough to deter wildlife with a long span of fence currently they have over 100 acres surrounded and cross fenced with electric fenceing
Lots of interesting comments I never quite found time to answer! (But be assured I read them all.
)
Eric --- Our property's basically not marked at all. I felt impinged upon the few times our neighbors put up no trespassing signs pointing in my direction, and I'd hate to make someone else feel the same way. That said, I would hope that people wandering around with guns would take the time to ask the landowners about boundaries --- I know that the few times we've let people hunt here, I've been very clear about where our property ends and someone else's begins. Technically, you're supposed to have the landowner's written permission to hunt on private land in Virginia, which I know isn't likely to happen, but should put the burden of knowing where boundaries lie on the part of the hunter (since the law clearly states that private wooded land isn't a commons).
Karen B --- I doubt a tree tube would last long inside a goat pasture where grazing pressure was high! The one baby tree we have in their pasture currently is firmly enclosed in remesh wrapped in chicken wire, staked down with two t-posts. You can't be too careful....