We didn't have time to finish the whole thing, but we couldn't leave the goats locked in the shed for a whole day, so we rigged the fence to be upright even though it's not completely attached. You can guess that the goats would try to take advantage of the weak spots in the fence, and you would be right.
Here's their original pasture with the grass eaten down to the nub:
They like to stay close to their old pasture and gradually eat their way further into the new stuff. They've very much enjoyed browsing among the lilac bushes. I put up some netting fence around the new windbreak we planted so they couldn't eat them all, and they've stayed out of it for the most part, but every once in a while Gerda will stick her head through, get her horns stuck, and try to pull back getting even more tangled. Thankfully I've noticed each time. Today's to-do list is to swap out the fence for some with tinier holes.
Here are the two weak areas in our fence:
That little section in the top picture blew over once pretty soon after we had set it up and the goats got out. G noticed them before they caused any damage and we reinforced that area so it won't blow over anymore.
I got home from school one day and noticed two of the plants we had just planted in our planter by the garage had been pulled out and were lying on the driveway. It looked similar to deer damage, but deer don't come up onto our yard during the day. My goat senses were tingling.
I checked the front gate and all was secure there. The goats came out of the goat shed to see what I was doing, so obviously they hadn't gotten out, right? Just in case, I walked around the fence to see if there were any places they could have gotten out. Bingo. The whole wooden fence had blown over making a very easy pathway out of the enclosure.
Upon later inspection, I discovered more goat damage to plants. They had eaten a bunch of leaves off my pomegranate bush and the fig tree. Ugh! Guess we better make reinforcing the fence a higher priority...
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