Our rancher took advantage of the recent auction price increase for goats and sheep and gave a new herd of 30 goats that love to climb the fence and dine on corn! So, all of us will need to raise our feed pen fences and hope they will not get in!

That’s a bummer.

I think I see a few trophy goats in there.

The small ones bbq really well.

If you can take a bucket of water and pour it at the fence, if any goes through the fence will not stop a goat from getting to the other side

Your feeding strategy seems to be very effective at attracting goats, but I don’t think you will see an increase in horn size unless you up the protein content considerably.

hot wire 2ft off the ground and a foot from fence is only thing that will work, but it will deter a few deer also


Even then don't be surprised if they eat wire and insulators off hot wire set up

When I had a goat problem, raising the fence didn’t keep them out. High fence would have. The guy that once raised goats on this place had the hot wire on the top of the fence. I guess that worked.

My ultimate solution was to shoot the goats, but you don’t have that option, I suppose.

Sage advice from an old goat!

I feel your pain. My old hunting spot I had to deal with those stinky bast*rds. Had to put cattle panels around the feeders to keep them from ripping the timers off.

Just put a hot wire about 1.5 in above the current panels. You can get a controller that runs on solar.

Sounds like a hotwire is the way to go! Will set it between 1.5 and 2" above the top of the cattle panels. I feel like the deer will be able to clear that height. There are 4 other guys on the lease that are having the same issue.

Hoping the rancher will sell the goats soon; they did a good job of cleaning up the lease. We're on 750 acres in Mills County, the goat capitol of Texas!

Believe I would find a new place to hunt. The rancher ought to know better. I’ve had the same issue when a neighbor got goats.

that reminds me of a lease my dad and his buddies got on back in the 1980s, north east of Llano. They went and looked at it in Sept., no livestock on the place (~600 acres), handshake, money exchanged with the landowner, drug their old converted school bus from old lease to new lease, got it set up and ready to go (this was before feeders were common). They show up opening weekend to find well over a hundred goats on the pasture, not a blade of anything up to as high as a goat can reach on the whole place. They saw a total of 1 deer all season long between 6 hunters and it was hauling tail from another adjoining ranch to the next adjoining ranch. Needless to say they were not very happy and only hunted that one season.

agree, hot wire is about your only option and even that might not work depending on how hungry the goats are.

This type of attitude is the main reason why I don't lease.

Agree. Rancher's land, rancher's choice about what he does with it.

My experience as well. They laughed at the electric fence as well. Hope JDickey has better luck!

Lots of reasons to avoid leasing certain properties but sheep and goats would be one of them for me.

The place my buddy is on has sheep and there is one sheep than will jump into the feed pin. But that is the only one that has figured out how to do it. The goats will get their heads stuck from time to time but never bother the deer when out together. If the sheep are in the area you can go ahead and call the hunt as the deer don't like the sheep at all.

Agree 100%. However, a man of dignity would have at least given the leasers notification. Some leasers think they own the place, some owners take advantage of hunters. I considered leasing my small place to a single family, but thought twice. What a mess.

Thinking back to this place and a previous owner having goats, he had net wire fencing everywhere, and the electric wire wasn’t just on top of the fence. He had hot wires at low height, middle, and high. The goats were gone (except for the 8 I shot, which belonged to another neighbor), but there were three insulators on each post.

My barber raises goats, and he high fenced his place.

The real issue is the lack of communication and an unwillingness to set honest expectations. I was on a lease where the land owner chose to make major (think backhoes and dozers) improvements in November and December. My objection wasn’t to the improvements or even the timing, but the complete absence of communication. We found out about the heavy equipment when they drove through the pasture. His complete contempt for our agreement couldn’t have been more plain.

that he was switching livestock species in March?

Yes, is a phone call or text message too much to ask?